Chapter 3 - Roles of Religious Communities in Ethiopian Society

Summary

CONTRARY TO THE popular image of their complete withdrawal from worldlyaffairs, religious communities have, in many religions, regions, and eras,played many key roles with regards to lay society and political andreligious leadership. In Solomonic Ethiopia, for example, the presence androle of religious communities was especially prominent. The roles suchinstitutions played in Solomonic society are a useful frame-work forexamining the topic at hand.

First, as Steven Kaplan's 1984 study of monastic holy men in EarlySolomonic Ethiopia has demonstrated, monasticism played a key role inchampioning local traditions, opposing attempts by Solomonic rulers toenforce centralized rule and unity in Church theology. The expansion of theSolomonic kingdom and consolidation of Solomonic rule brought many formerlyautonomous groups and regions under more direct Solomonic control, at theexpense of the authority of the regional leadership. With theiroppor-tunities in the political arena greatly reduced, some members of theregional nobility assumed a monastic life and continued to oppose thecentralizing policy of Solomonic monarchs in their new capacity as monasticleaders. Thus, while Solomonic rulers often tended to support thetheological position of the abun, the metropolitan of theEthiopian Orthodox Church, himself an Egyptian monk appointed by thePatriarch of Alexandria, some monastic leaders advanced and defendedregional traditions at odds with the Alexandrian creed. A striking exampleis the veneration of the Saturday Sabbath, advanced by the Ewosṭateanmonastic movement (Fiaccadori 2005). Betä Ǝsraʾelmonasticism, as a movement which safeguarded BetäƎsraʾel identity and religious practices and resisted attemptsto spread Christianity within it (Ben-Dor 1987; Leslau 1947), can also beseen in the context of opposition to the religious aspects of Solomoniccentralizing policy (Kaplan 1984, 39–41).

Second, as in other regions and periods, the Christian monastic communitiesof Solomonic Ethiopia played a central role in evangelization, both withinthe Solomonic state and in frontier regions. This is partly linked to theprocess mentioned above, since monastic holy men and communities at oddswith central authorities were in some cases exiled or chose to reside inlocalities out of easy reach of the latter.