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Mary in Contemporary Ethiopian Orthodox Devotion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
IN a double monastery located near the important pilgrimage place of Lalibela, two nuns I had been interviewing suddenly asked me, ‘Why don’t you ask us about Mary?’ They wanted to tell me about how she cared for them, loved them, and answered their prayers. ‘Whatever we ask her she will give us’, they stated. Mary was important for the Ethiopian Orthodox believers I worked with; it became obvious that Mary has an exclusive place in Ethiopian devotion in general. Most of the time, Ethiopian Christians relate to Christ as a distant saviour and turn to Mary in dealing with their daily lives. Mary is pure in both body and soul, a human being without sin, so that Christ becomes the union of divinity and humanity.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2004
References
1 Double monasteries are common in Ethiopia, with nuns and monks living in the same area.
2 Kefjalew, Kesis Merahi, The Covenant of Holy Mary Zion with Ethiopia (Addis Ababa, 1997), 46–7.Google Scholar
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5 One of them was in fact crowned after a series of coincidences.
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17 Widowers also choose this way of life in their last years, but possibly the number of elderly nuns is higher.
18 Helen Pankhurst, Gender, Development and Identity: an Ethiopian Study (1992).
19 Eleonora Lvova, ‘Forms of Marriage and the status of Women in Ethiopia’, in Fukui, Kurimoto, and Shigeta, Papers, 583.
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