Chapter XIII: Book V (11)

All the churches are round, with thatched roofs; their summits are perfect cones; the outside is surrounded by a number of wooden pillars, which are nothing else than the trunks of the cedar-tree, and are placed to support the edifice, about eight feet of the roof projecting beyond the wall of the church, which forms an agreeable walk, or colonade, around it in hot weather, or in rain. The inside of the church is in several divisions, according as is prescribed by the law of Moses. The first is a circle somewhat wider than the inner one; here the congregation sit and pray. Within this is a square, and that square is divided by a veil or curtain, in which is another very small division answering to the holy of holies. This is so narrow that none but the priests can go into it. You are bare-footed whenever you enter the church, and, if bare-footed, you may go through every part of it, if you have any such curiosity, provided you are pure, _i. e._ have not been concerned with women for twenty-four hours before, or touched carrion or dead bodies, (a curious assemblage of ideas) for in that case you are not to go within the precincts, or outer circumference of the church, but stand and say your prayers at an awful distance among the cedars.

All persons of both sexes, under Jewish disqualifications, are obliged to observe this distance; and this is always a place belonging to the church, where, unless in Lent, you see the greatest part of the congregation; but this is left to your own conscience, and, if there was either great inconvenience in the one situation, or great satisfaction in the other, the case would be otherwise.

When you go to the church you put off your shoes before your first entering the outer precinct; but you must leave a servant there with them, or else they will be stolen, if good for any thing, by the priests and monks before you come out of the church. At entry you kiss the threshold, and two door-posts, go in and say what prayer you please, that finished, you come out again, and your duty is over. The churches are full of pictures, painted on parchment, and nailed upon the walls, in a manner little less slovenly than you see paltry prints in beggarly country ale-houses. There has been always a sort of painting known among the scribes, a daubing much inferior to the worst of our sign-painters. Sometimes, for a particular church, they get a number of pictures of saints, on skins of parchment, ready finished from Cairo, in a stile very little superior to these performances of their own. They are placed like a frize, and hung in the upper part of the wall. St George is generally there with his dragon, and St Demetrius fighting a lion. There is no choice in their saints, they are both of the Old and New Testament, and those that might be dispensed with from both. There is St Pontius Pilate and his wife; there is St Balaam and his ass; Samson and his jaw-bone; and so of the rest. But the thing that surprised me most was a kind of square-miniature upon the front of the head-piece, or mitre, of the priest, administering the sacrament at Adowa, representing Pharaoh on a white horse plunging in the Red Sea, with many guns and pistols swimming upon the surface of it around him.

Nothing embossed, nor in relief, ever appears in any of their churches; all this would be reckoned idolatry, so much so that they do not wear a cross, as has been represented, on the top of the ball of the sendick, or standard, because it casts a shade; but there is no doubt that pictures have been used in their churches from the very earliest age of Christianity.

The Abuna is looked upon as the patriarch of the Abyssinian church, for they have little knowledge of the coptic patriarch of Alexandria. We are perfectly ignorant of the history of these prelates for many years after their appointment. The first of these mentioned is Abuna Tecla Haimanout, who distinguished himself by the restoration of the royal family, and the regulations he made both in church and state, as we have seen in the history of those times: a very remarkable, but wise regulation was then made, that the Abyssinians should not have it in their power to choose one of their own countrymen as Abuna.

Wise men saw the fallen state of literature among them; and unless opportunity was given, from time to time, for their priests to go abroad to Jerusalem for their instruction, and for the purpose of bringing the Abuna, Tecla Haimanout knew that very soon no set of people would be more shamefully ignorant than those priests, even in the most common dogmas of their profession. He hoped therefore, by a considerable stipend, to tempt some men of learning to accept of this place, to give his countenance to learning and religion among them.

The Arabic canon[99], which is preserved by the Abyssinian church, and said to be of the council of Nice, should certainly be attributed to this Abuna, and is a forgery in, or very soon after, his time; for it is plain this canon took place about the year 1300, that it was lawful to elect an Abuna, who was a native of Abyssinia before this prohibition, otherwise it would not have applied. Abuna Tecla Haimanout was an Abyssinian by birth, and he was Abuna; the prohibition therefore had not then taken place: but, as no Abyssinian was afterwards chosen, it must certainly be a work of his time, for it is impossible a canon should be made by the council of Nice, settling the rank of a bishop in a nation which, for above 200 years after that general council, were not Christians.

As the Abuna very seldom understands the language, he has no share of the government, but goes to the palace on days of ceremony, or when he has any favour to ask or complaint to make. He is much fallen in esteem from what he was formerly, chiefly from his own little intrigues, his ignorance, avarice, and want of firmness. His greatest employment is in ordinations. A number of men and children present themselves at a distance, and there stand, from humility, not daring to approach him. He then asks who these are? and they tell him that they want to be deacons. On this, with a small iron cross in his hand, after making two or three signs, he blows with his mouth twice or thrice upon them, saying, “Let them be deacons.” I saw once all the army of Begemder made deacons, just returned from shedding the blood of 10,000 men, thus drawn up in Aylo Meidan, and the Abuna standing at the church of St Raphael, about a quarter of a mile distant from them. With these were mingled about 1000 women, who consequently, having part of the same blast and brandishment of the cross, were as good deacons as the rest.

The same with regard to monks. A crowd of people, when he is riding, will assemble within 500 yards of him, and there begin a melancholy song. He asks who these men with beards are? they tell him they want to be ordained monks. After the same signs of the cross, and three blasts with his mouth, he orders them to be monks. But in ordaining priests, they must be able to read a chapter of St Mark, which they do in a language he does not understand a word of. They then give the Abuna a brick of salt, to the value of perhaps sixpence, for their ordination; which, from this present given, the Jesuits maintained to be Simoniacal.

The Itchegué is the chief of the monks in general, especially those of Debra Libanos. The head of the other monks, called those of St Eustathius, is the superior of the convent of Mahebar Selassé, on the N. W. corner of Abyssinia, near Kuara, and the Shangalla, towards Sennaar and the river Dender. All this tribe is grossly ignorant, and through time, I believe, will lose the use of letters entirely.

The Itcheguè is ordained by two chief priests holding a white cloth, or veil, over him, while another says a prayer; and they then lay all their hands on his head, and join in psalms together. He is a man, in troublesome times, of much greater consequence than the Abuna. There are, after these, chief priests and scribes, as in the Jewish church: the last of these, the ignorant, careless copiers of the holy scriptures.

The monks here do not live in convents, as in Europe, but in separate houses round their church, and each cultivates a part of the property they have in land. The priests have their maintenance assigned to them in kind, and do not labour. A steward, being a layman, is placed among them by the king, who receives all the rents belonging to the churches, and gives to the priests the portion that is their due; but neither the Abuna, nor any other churchman, has any business with the revenues of churches, nor can touch them.

The articles of the faith of the Abyssinians have been inquired into and discussed with so much keenness in the beginning of this century, that I fear I should disoblige some of my readers were I to pass this subject without notice.

Their first bishop, Frumentius, being ordained about the year 333, and instructed in the religion of the Greeks of the church of Alexandria by St Athanasius, then sitting in the chair of St Mark, it follows that the true religion of the Abyssinians, which they received on their conversion to Christianity, is that of the Greek church; and every rite or ceremony in the Abyssinian church may be found and traced up to its origin in the Greek church while both of them were orthodox.

Frumentius preserved Abyssinia untainted with heresy till the day of his death. We find, from a letter preserved in the works of St Athanasius, that Constantius, the heretical Greek emperor, wished St Athanasius to deliver him up, which that patriarch refused to do: indeed at that time it was not in his power.

Soon after this, Arianism, and a number of other heresies, each in their turn, were brought by the monks from Egypt, and infected the church of Abyssinia. A great part of these heresies, in the beginning, were certainly owing to the difference of the languages in those times, and especially the two words Nature and Person, than which no two words were ever more equivocal in every language in which they have been translated. Either of these words, in our own language, is a sufficient example of what I have said; and in fact we have adopted them from the Latin. If we had adopted the signification of these words in religion from the Greek, and applied the Latin words of Person and Nature to common and material cases, perhaps we had done better. Neither of them hath ever yet been translated into the Abyssinian, so as to be understood to mean the same thing in different places. This for a time was, in a certain degree, remedied, or understood, by the free access they had, for several ages, both to Cairo and Jerusalem, where their books were revised and corrected, and many of the principal orthodox opinions inculcated. But, since the conquest of Arabia and Egypt by Sultan Selim, in 1516, the communication between Abyssinia and these two countries hath been very precarious and dangerous, if not entirely cut off; and now as to doctrine, I am perfectly convinced they are in every respect to the full as great heretics as ever the Jesuits represented them. And I am confident, if any Catholic missionaries attempt to instruct them again, they will soon lose the use of letters, and the little knowledge they yet have of religion, from prejudice only, and fear of incurring a danger they are not sufficiently acquainted with to follow the means of avoiding it.

The two natures in Christ, the two persons, their unity, their equality, the inferiority of the manhood, doctrines, and definitions of the time of St Athanasius, are all wrapt up in tenfold darkness, and inextricable from amidst the thick clouds of heresy and ignorance of language. Nature is often mistaken for person, and person for nature; the same of the human substance. It is monstrous to hear their reasoning upon it. One would think, that every different monk, every time he talks, purposely broached some new heresy. Scarce one of them that ever I conversed with, and those of the very best of them, would suffer it to be said, that Christ’s body was perfectly like our’s. Nay, it was easily seen that, in their hearts, they went still further, and were very loth to believe, if they did believe it at all, that the body of the Virgin Mary and St Anne were perfectly human.

Not to trouble the reader further with these uninteresting particulars and distinctions, I shall only add, that the Jesuits, in the account they give of the heresies, ignorance, and obstinacy of the Abyssinian clergy, have not misrepresented them, in the imputations made against them, either in point of faith or of morals. Whether, this being the case, the mission they undertook of themselves into that country, gave them authority to destroy the many with a view to convert the few, is a question to be resolved hereafter; I believe it did not; and that the tares and the wheat should have been suffered to grow together till a hand of more authority, guided by unerring judgment, pulled them, with that portion of safety he had pre-ordained for both.

The Protestant writers again unfairly triumph over their adversaries, the Catholics, by asking, Why all that noise about the two natures in Christ? It is plain, say they, from passages in the Haimanout Abou, and their other tracts upon orthodox belief, that they acknowledge that Christ was perfect God and perfect man, of a rational soul and human flesh subsisting, and that all the confessions of unity, co-equality, and inferiority, are there expressed in the clearest manner as received in the Greek church. What necessity was there for more; and what need of disputing upon these points already so fully settled?

This, I beg leave to say, is unfair; for though it is true that, at the time of collecting the Haimanout Abou, and at the time St Athanasius, St Cyril, and St Chrysostom wrote, the explanation of these points was uniform in favour of orthodoxy, and that while access could easily be had to Jerusalem or Alexandria, then Greek and Christian cities, difficulties, if any arose, were easily resolved; yet, at the time the Jesuits came, those books were very rare in the country, and the contents of them so far from being understood, that they were applied to the support of the grossest heresies, from the misinterpretation of the ignorant monks of these latter times. That the Abyssinians _had been_ orthodox availed nothing: they _were then_ become as ignorant of the doctrines of St Athanasius and St Cyril, as if those fathers had never wrote; and it is their religion at this period which the Jesuits condemn, not that of the church of Alexandria, when in its purity under the first patriarchs; and, to complete all their misfortunes, no access to Jerusalem is any longer open to them, and very rarely communication with Cairo.

On the other hand, the Jesuits, who found that the Abyssinians were often wrong in some things, were resolved to deny that they could be right in any thing; and, from attacking their tenets, they fell upon their ceremonies received in the Greek church at the same time with Christianity; and in this dispute they shewed great ignorance and malevolence, which they supported by the help of falsehood and invention. I shall take notice of only one instance in many, because it has been insisted upon by both parties with unusual vehemence, and very little candour.

It was settled by the first general council, that one baptism only was necessary for the regeneration of man, for freeing him from the sin of our first parents, and lifting him under the banner of Christ,--“I confess one baptism for the remission of sins,” says the Symbol. Now it was maintained by the Jesuits, that in Abyssinia, once every year, they baptised all grown people, or adults. I shall, as briefly as possible, set down what I myself saw while on the spot.

The small river, running between the town of Adowa and the church, had been dammed up for several days; the stream was scanty, so that it scarcely overflowed. It was in places three feet deep, in some, perhaps, four, or little more. Three large tents were pitched the morning before the feast of the Epiphany; one on the north for the priests to repose in during intervals of the service, and beside this one to communicate in; on the south there was a third tent for the monks and priests of another church to rest themselves in their turn. About twelve o’clock at night the monks and priests met together, and began their prayers and psalms at the water-side, one party relieving each other. At dawn of day the governor, Welleta Michael, came thither with some soldiers to raise men for Ras Michael, then on his march against Waragna Fasil, and far down on a small hill by the water-side, the troops all skirmishing on foot and on horseback around them.

As soon as the sun began to appear, three large crosses of wood were carried by three priests dressed in their sacerdotal vestments, and who, coming to the side of the river, dipt the cross into the water, and all this time the firing, skirmishing, and praying went on together. The priests with the crosses returned, one of their number before them carrying something less than an English quart of water in a silver cup or chalice; when they were about fifty yards from Welleta Michael, that general stood up, and the priest took as much water as he could hold in his hands and sprinkled it upon his head, holding the cup at the same time to Welleta Michael’s mouth to taste; after which the priest received it back again, saying, at the same time, “Gzier y’barak,” which is simply, “May God bless you.” Each of the three crosses were then brought forward to Welleta Michael, and he kissed them. The ceremony of sprinkling the water was then repeated to all the great men in the tent, all cleanly dressed as in gala. Some of them, not contented with aspersion, received the water in the palms of their hands joined, and drank it there; more water was brought for those that had not partaken of the first; and, after the whole of the governor’s company was sprinkled, the crosses returned to the river, their bearers singing _hallelujahs_, and the skirmishing and firing continuing.

Janni, my Greek friend, had recommended me to the priest of Adowa; and, as the governor had placed me by him, I had an opportunity, for both these reasons, of being served among the first. My friend the priest sprinkled water upon my head, and gave me his blessing in the same words he had used to the others; but, as I saw it was not necessary to drink, I declined putting the cup to my lips, for two reasons; one, because I knew the Abyssinians have a scruple to eat or drink after strangers; the other, because I apprehended the water was not perfectly clean; for no sooner had the crosses first touched the pool, and the cup filled from the clean part for the governor, than two or three hundred boys, calling themselves _deacons_, plunged in with only a white cloth, or rag, tied round their middle; in all other respects they were perfectly naked. All their friends and relations (indeed everybody) went close down to the edge of the pool, where water was thrown upon them, and first decently enough by boys of the town, and those brought on purpose as deacons; but, after the better sort of people had received the aspersion, the whole was turned into a riot, the boys, muddying the water, threw it round them upon every one they saw well-dressed or clean. The governor retreated first, then the monks, and then the crosses, and left the brook in possession of the boys and blackguards, who rioted there till two o’clock in the afternoon.

I must, however, observe, that, a very little time after the governor had been sprinkled, two horses and two mules, belonging to Ras Michael and Ozoro Esther, came and were washed. Afterwards the soldiers went in and bathed their horses and guns; those who had wounds bathed them also. I saw no women in the bath uncovered, even to the knee; nor did I see any person of the rank of decent servants go into the water at all except with the horses. Heaps of platters and pots, that had been used by Mahometans or Jews, were brought thither likewise to be purified; and thus the whole ended.

I saw this ceremony performed afterwards at Kahha, near Gondar, in presence of the king, who drank some of the water, and was sprinkled by the priests; then took the cup in his hand, and threw the rest that was left upon Amha Yasous[100], saying, “I will be your deacon;” and this was thought a high compliment, the priest giving him his blessing at the same time, but offering him no more water.

I shall now state, in his own words, the account given of this by Alvarez, chaplain to the Portuguese embassy, under Don Roderigo de Lima.

The king had invited Don Roderigo de Lima, the Portuguese ambassador, to be present at the celebration of the festival of the Epiphany. They went about a mile and a half from their former station, and encamped upon the side of a pond which had been prepared for the occasion. Alvarez says, that, in their way, they were often asked by those they met or overtook, “Whether or not they were going to be baptized?” to which the chaplain and his company answered in the negative, as having been already once baptized in their childhood.

“In the night, says he, a great number of priests assembled about the pond, roaring and singing with a view of blessing the water. After midnight the baptism began. The Abuna Mark, the king and queen, were the first that went into the lake; they had each a piece of cotton cloth about their middle, which was just so much more than the rest of the people had. At the sun-rising the baptism was most thronged; after which, when Alvarez[101] _came_, the lake was full of holy water, into which they had poured oil.”

It should seem, from this outset of his narrative, that he was not at the lake till the ceremony was half over, and did not see the benediction of the water at all, nor the curious exhibition of the King, Queen, and Abuna, and their cotton cloths. As for the circumstance of the oil being poured into the water, I will not positively contradict it, for, though I was early there, it might have escaped me if it was done in the dark. However, I never heard it mentioned as part of the ceremony; and it is probable I should, if any such thing was really practised; neither was I in time to have seen it at Kahha.

“Before the pond a scaffold was built, covered round with planks, within which sat the king looking towards the pond, his face covered with blue taffeta, while an old man, who was the king’s tutor, was standing in the water up to the shoulders, naked as he was born, and half dead with cold, for it had _frozen_ violently in the night. All those that came near him he took by the head and plunged them in the water, whether men or women, saying, in his own language, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”

Now Shoa, where the king was then, is in lat. 8° N. and the sun was in 22° south declination, advancing northward, so the sun was, on the day of the Epiphany, within 30° of the zenith of the bathing-place. The thermometer of Fahrenheit rises at Gondar about that time to 68°, so in Shoa it cannot rise to less than 70°, for Gondar is in lat. 12° N. that is 4° farther northward, so it is not possible water should freeze, nor did I ever see ice in Abyssinia, not even on the highest or coldest mountains. January is one of the hottest months in the year, day and night the sky is perfectly serene, nor is there there a long disproportioned winter night. At Shoa the days are equal to the nights, at least as to sense, even in the month of January.

The baptism, Alvarez says, began at midnight, and the old tutor dipt every person under water, taking him by the head, saying, ‘I baptise thee in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.’ It was most thronged at sun-rise, and ended about nine o’clock; a long time for an old man to stand in frozen water.

The number (as women were promiscuously admitted) could not be less than 40,000; so that even the nine hours this baptist-general officiated, he must have had exercise enough to keep him warm, if 40,000, (many of them naked beauties) passed through _his hands_.

The women were stark naked before the men, not even a rag about them. Without some such proper medium as frozen water, I fear it would not have contributed much to the interests of religion to have trusted a priest (even an old one) among so many bold and naked beauties, especially as he had the first six hours of them in the dark.

The Abuna, the king, and queen, were the three first baptised, all three being absolutely naked, having only a cotton cloth round their middle. I am sure there never could be a greater deviation from the manners of any kingdom, than this is from those of Abyssinia. The king is always covered; you seldom see any part of him but his eyes. The queen and every woman in Abyssinia, in public and private, (I mean where nothing is intended but conversation) are covered to the chin. It is a disgrace to them to have even their feet seen by strangers; and their arms and hands are concealed even to their nails. A curious circumstance therefore it would have been for the king to be so liberal of his queen’s charms, while he covers his own face with blue taffeta; but to imagine that the Abuna, a coptish monk bred in the desert of St Macarius, would expose himself naked among naked women, contrary to the usual custom of the celebration he observes in his own church, is monstrous, and must exceed all belief whatever. As the Abuna Mark too was of the reasonable age of 110 years, he might, I think, have dispensed at that time of life with a bathing gown, especially as it was _frost_.

The old man in the pond repeated the formula, “I baptise you in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” in his own language; and Alvarez, it is plain, understood not one word of Abyssinian. Yet, on the other hand, he speaks Latin to the king, who wonderfully understands him, and answers as decisively on the merits of the dispute as if he had been educated in the Sorbonne. “Confiteor unum baptizma” says Alvarez[102], was a constitution of the Nicene council under Pope Leo. Right, says the king, whose church, however, anathematized Leo and the council he presided at, which both the king and Alvarez should have known was not the Nicene council, though the words of the symbol quoted are thought to be part of a confession framed by that assembly.

“Qui crediderit et baptizatus fuerit salvus erit,” says Alvarez. “You say right, answers the king, as to baptism; these are the words of our Saviour; but this present ceremony was lately invented by a grandfather of mine, in favour of such as have turned Moors, and are desirous again of becoming Christians.”

I should think, in the first place, this answer of the king, should have let Alvarez see no baptism was intended there; or, if it was a re-baptism, it only took place in favour of those who had turned Moors, and must therefore have been but partial. If this was really the case, what had the king, queen, and Abuna to do in it? Sure they had neither apostatized nor was the company of apostates a very creditable society for them.

Alvarez, to persuade us this is real baptism, says that oil was thrown into the pond before he came. He will not charge himself with having seen this, and it is probably a falsehood. But he knew it was an essential in baptism in all the churches in the east; so indeed is salt, which he should have said was here used likewise: then he would have had all the materials of Greek baptism, and this salt might have contributed to cooling the water, that had frozen under the rays of a burning sun.

Alvarez must have seen, that not only men and women go to be washed in the pool, but horses, cows, mules, and a prodigious number of asses. Are these baptised? I would wish to know the formula the reverend baptist-general used on their occasion.

There is but one church where I ever saw sacred rites, or something like baptism, conferred upon asses; it is, I think, at Rome on St Andrew’s or St Patrick’s day. It should be St Balaam’s, if he was in the Roman kalendar as high as he is in the Abyssinian. In that church (it is I think on Monte Cavallo) all sorts of asses, about and within Rome, are gathered together, and showers of holy water and blessings rained by a priest upon them. What is the formula I do not know; although it is a joke put upon strangers, especially of one nation, to assemble them there; or whether the two churches of Rome and Abyssinia differ so much in this as in other points of discipline, I am not informed; but the rationality and decency of such a ceremony being the same in all churches, the service performed at the time should be the same likewise.

I will not then have any scruple to say, that this whole account of Alvarez is a gross fiction; that no baptism, or any thing like baptism, is meant by the ceremony; that a man is no more baptised by keeping the anniversary of our Saviour’s baptism, than he is crucified by keeping his crucifixion. The commemoration of our Saviour’s baptism on the epiphany, and the blessing the waters that day, is an old observance of the eastern church, formerly performed in public in Egypt as now in Ethiopia. Since that of Alexandria fell into the hands of Mahometans, the fear of insult and profanation has obliged them to confine this ceremony, and all other processions, within the walls of their churches, in each of which there is constantly a place devoted to this use. Those that cannot attend the ceremony of aspersion in the church, especially sick or infirm people, have the water sent to them, and a large contribution is made for the patriarch, or bishop; yet nobody ever took it into their heads to tax either Greek or Armenian with a repetition of baptism.

Monsieur de Tournefort[103], in his travels through the Levant, gives you a figure of the Greek priest, who blesses the water in a peculiar habit, with a pastoral staff in his hand.

But, besides this, various falsehoods have likewise been propagated about the manner of baptism practiced in Abyssinia, all in order to impugn the validity of it, and to excuse the rash conduct of the Jesuits for re-baptising all the Abyssinians, as if they had been a Jewish and Pagan people that never had been baptised at all. The violation of this article of the creed, or confession of Nice, was a cause of great offence to the Abyssinians, and of the misfortunes that happened afterwards. The whole of the Abyssinian service of baptism is in their liturgy. The Jesuits had plenty of copies in their hands, and could have pointed out the part of the service that was heretical, if they had pleased; they did not pretend, however, to do this, and their silence condemns them.

As for the idle stories that are told of the words pronounced, such as,--“I baptize you in the name of the Holy Trinity,”--“In the name of Peter and Paul,”--“I baptize you in the water of Jordan,”--“May God baptise you,”--“May God wash you,” and many others, they are all invented by the Jesuits, to excuse the repetition of baptism in Abyssinia, which there was no sort of occasion for, as they might have examined the words and form in the liturgies, which are in every church; and I must here only observe, that if, as the chaplain of Alvarez says, the priest in the pool, on the festival of the Epiphany, was so fond of the proper words as even, at that time, to say, “I baptise you in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” the words he quotes to shew this immersion in water on the Epiphany, is a real baptism, I cannot comprehend why they should vary them to other words, when nothing but baptism is meant. But this I can bear evidence of, that, in no time when I was present, as I have above a hundred times been at the baptism both of adults and infants, aye, and of apostates too, I never heard other words pronounced than the orthodox baptismal ones, “I baptize thee in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” immerging the child in pure water, into which they first pour a small quantity of oil of olives, in the form of a cross.

The Abyssinians receive the holy sacrament in both kinds in unleavened bread, and in the grape bruised with the husk together as it grows, so that it is a kind of marmalade, and is given in a flat spoon: whatever they may pretend, some mixture seems necessary to keep it from fermentation in the state that it is in, unless the dried cluster is fresh bruised just before it is used, for it is little more fluid than the common marmalade of confectioners; but it is perfectly the grape as it grew, bruised stones and skin together. Some means, however, have been used, as I suppose, to prevent fermentation, and make it keep; and, though this is constantly denied, I have often thought I tasted a flavour that was not natural to the grape itself.

It is a mistake that there is no wine in Abyssinia, for a quantity of excellent strong wine is made at Dreeda, south-west from Gondar about thirty miles, which would more than supply the quantity necessary for the celebration of the eucharist in all Abyssinia twenty times over. The people themselves are not fond of wine, and plant the vine in one place only; and in this they have been imitated by the Egyptians, their colony; but a small black grape, of an excellent flavour, grows plentifully wild in every wood in Tigré.

Large pieces of bread are given to the communicants in proportion to their quality; and I have seen great men, who, though they open their mouths as wide as conveniently a man can do, yet from the respect the priest bore him, such a portion of the loaf was put into his mouth that water ran from his eyes, from the incapacity of chewing it, which, however, he does as indecently, and with full as much noise, as he eats at table.

After receiving the sacrament of the eucharist in both kinds, a pitcher of water is brought, of which the communicant drinks a large draught; and well he needs it to wash down the quantity of bread he has just swallowed. He then retires from the steps of the inner division upon which the administering priest stands, and, turning his face to the wall of the church, in private says some prayer with seeming decency and attention.

The Romanists doubt of the validity of the Abyssinian consecration of the elements, because in their liturgy it is plainly said, “Lord, put thy hand upon this cup, and bless it, and sanctify it, and purify it, that in it may be made thy holy blood;” and of the bread they say, “Bless this saucer, or plate, that in it may be made thy holy body.” And in their prayer they say, “Change this bread that it may be made thy pure body which is joined with this cup of thy precious blood.” The Jesuits doubt of the validity of this consecration, because it is said, “this _bread_ is my body,” and over the wine, “this _cup_ is my blood;” whereas, to operate a true transubstantiation, they should say over the bread, “this is my body.”

For my own part, I leave it to the reverend fathers, who are the best judges, what is necessary to operate this miracle of transubstantiation. The reality of the thing itself is denied by all Protestant churches, has been often doubted by others, has been ridiculed by lay-writers, and can never be a matter, I believe, of thorough conviction, much less of proof to any. The dignity of the subject, on which it touches nearly, as well as tenderness for our brethren on the continent, an article of whose faith it is, should always screen it from being treated with pleasantry, whatever we believe, or whether we believe it or not.

M. Ludolf thinks, that the words I have set down are a proof the Abyssinians do not believe in transubstantiation. For my part, from those very words, I cannot think any thing is clearer than that they do; the bread is upon the plate; they pray that that plate may be blessed, “That in it the bread may be made God’s holy body[104];” and of the wine they say, “That it may be made thy holy blood:” and in their prayer they say, “Change this bread that it may be made thy body;” and again, “May the Holy Ghost shine upon this bread, that it may be made the body of Christ our God, and that this cup may be changed and become the blood, not the _symbol_, of the blood of Christ our God.” With all respect to Mr Ludolf’s opinion, I must think that, though the benediction prayed upon the patine, spoon, and chalice, is but an aukward expression, yet, if I understand the language, “converte” and “immutetur” are literal translations of the Ethiopic, and seem to pray for a transubstantiation as directly as words will admit, whether they believe in it or not; nor, as far as I know, can any stronger or more expressive be found to substitute in their place.

I shall finish this subject (which is not of my province, and which I have mentioned, because I know it is a matter which some of my readers desire information upon) by an anecdote that happened a few months before my coming into Abyssinia, as it was accidentally told me by the priest of Adowa the very day of the Epiphany, and which Janni vouched to be true, and to have seen.

The Sunday before Ras Michael’s departure for Gondar from Adowa, he went to church in great pomp, and there received the sacrament. There happened to be such a crowd to see him, that the wine, part of the consecrated elements, was thrown down and spilt upon the steps whereon the communicants stood at receiving. Some straw or hay was instantly gathered and sprinkled upon it to cover it, and the communicants continued the service till the end, treading that grass under foot.

This giving great offence to Janni, and some few priests that lived with him, it was told Michael, who, without explaining himself, said only, “As to the fact of throwing the hay, they are a parcel of hogs, and know no better.” These few words had stuck in the stomach of the priest of Adowa, who, with great secrecy, and as a mark of friendship, begged I would give him my opinion what he should have done, or rather, what would have been done in my country? I told him, “That the answer to his question depended upon two things, which, being known, his difficulties would very easily be solved. If you do believe that the wine spilt by the mob upon the steps, and trod under foot afterwards, was really the blood of Jesus Christ, then you was guilty of a most horrid crime, and you should cry upon the mountains to cover you; and ages of atonement are not sufficient to expiate it. You should, in the mean time, have railed the place round with iron, or built it round with stone, that no foot, or any thing else but the dew of heaven, could have fallen upon it, or you should have brought in the river upon the place that would have washed it all to the sea, and covered it ever after from sacrilegious profanation. But if, on the contrary, you believe, (as many Christian churches do) that the wine (notwithstanding consecration) remained in the cup nothing more than wine, but was only the symbol, or type, of Christ’s blood of the New Testament, then the spilling it upon the steps, and the treading upon it afterwards, having been merely accidental, and out of your power to prevent, being so far from your wish that you are heartily sorry that it happened, I do not reckon that you are further liable in the crime of sacrilege, than if the wine had not been consecrated at all. You are to humble yourself, and sincerely regret that so irreverent an accident happened in your hands, and in your time, but as you did not intend it, and could not prevent it; the consequence of an accident, where inattention is exceedingly culpable, will be imputed to you, and nothing further.”

The priest declared to me, with great earnestness, that he never did believe that the elements in the eucharist were converted by consecration into the real body and blood of Christ. He said, however, that he believed this to be the Roman Catholic faith, but it never was his; and that he conceived the bread was bread, and the wine was wine, even after consecration. From this example, which occurred merely accidentally, and was not the fruit of interrogation or curiosity, it appears to me, whatever the Jesuits say, some at least among the Abyssinians do not believe the real presence in the eucharist; but further I am not enough informed to give a positive opinion. To follow this investigation more curiously would have been attended with a considerable degree of danger; and therefore I have stated my only means of knowledge, and leave my readers entirely to the freedom of their own opinion, and to after inquiry and information.

The Abyssinians are not all agreed about the state of souls before the resurrection of the body. The opinion which generally prevails is, that there is no third state; but that, after the example of the thief, the souls of good men enjoy the beatific vision immediately upon the separation from the body. But I must here observe, that their practice and books do both contradict this; for, as often as any person dies, alms are given, and prayers are offered for the souls of those departed, which would be vain did they believe they were already in the presence of God, and in possession of the greatest bless possible, wanting nothing to complete it. “Remember, (says their liturgy) O Lord! the souls of thy servants, our father Abba Matthias, and the rest of our saints, Abba Salama, and Abba Jacob.” In another place, “Remember, O Lord! the kings of Ethiopia, Abreha, and Atzbeha, Caleb, and Guebra Mascal.” And again, “Release, O Lord! our father Antonius, and Abba Macarius.” If this is not directly acknowledging a separate state, it can have no meaning at all.

I have already said, that the Agaazi, the predecessors of those people that settled in Tigrè from the mountains of the Habab, were shepherds adjoining to the Red Sea; that they speak the language _Geez_, and are the only people in Abyssinia in possession of letters; that these are all circumcised, both men and women. The former term, as applied to men, is commonly known to every one the least acquainted with the Jewish history. The latter is, as far as I know, a rite merely Gentile, although in Africa, at least that part adjoining to Egypt and the Red Sea, it is much more known and more universally practised than the other. This I shall call _excision_, that I may express this uncommon operation by as decent a word as possible. The Falasha likewise submit to both.

These nations, however they agree in their rite, differ in their accounts of the time they received this ceremony, as well as the manner of performing it. The Abyssinians of Tigré say, that they received it from Ishmael’s family and his descendants, with whom they were early connected in their trading voyages. They say also, that the queen of Saba, and all the women of that coast, had suffered excision at the usual time of life, before puberty, and before her journey to Jerusalem. The Falasha again declare, that their circumcision was that commonly practised at Jerusalem in the time of Solomon, and in use among them when they left Palestine, and came into Abyssinia.

The circumcision of the Abyssinians is performed with a sharp knife, or razor. There is no laceration with the nails, no formula or repetition of words, nor any religious ceremony at the time of the operation, nor is it done at any particular age, and generally it is a woman that is the surgeon. The Falasha say, they perform it sometimes with the edge of a sharp stone; sometimes with a knife or razor, and at other times with the nails of their fingers; and for this purpose they have the nails of their little fingers of an immoderate length: at the time of the operation the priest chants a hymn, or verse, importing, “Blessed art thou, O Lord, who hast ordained circumcision!” This is performed on the eighth day, and is a religious rite, according to the first institution by God to Abraham.

The Abyssinians pretend theirs is not so; and, being pressed for the reason, they tell you it is because Christ and the apostles were circumcised, though they do not hold it necessary to salvation. But it is the objection they constantly make against eating out of the same plate, or drinking out of the same cup with strangers, that they are uncircumcised, while, with the Egyptians or the Cophts, though equally strangers, they make no such difficulty. In the time of the Jesuits, when the Roman Catholic religion was abolished, and liberty given them to return to their old worship, their priests proclaimed a general circumcision; and the populace, in the first days of their fury, or triumph, murdered many Catholics, by stabbing them with a lance in that part, as they met them, repeating in derision the Jewish hymn, or ejaculation, “Blessed is the Lord that hath ordained circumcision!” so that, I believe, their indifference in this article is rather owing to not being contradicted; just as they are careless about every other parts of religion, unless such as have been revived in their minds by disputes with the Jesuits, and kept up since in part among their clergy. But none of them pretend that circumcision arises from necessity of any kind, or from any obstruction or impediment to procreation, or that it becomes necessary for cleanliness, or from the heat of climate.

None of these reasons, constantly alledged in Europe, are ever to be heard of here, nor do I believe they have the smallest foundation any where; and this, I think, should weigh strongly in favour of the account scripture gives of it. Examining the origin of this ceremony, independent of this revelation, I will never believe that man, or nations of men, rashly submitted to a disgraceful, sometimes dangerous, and always painful operation, unless there had been proposed, as a consequence, some reward for submitting to, or some punishment for refusing it, which balanced in their minds the pain and danger, as well as disgrace, of that operation.

All the inhabitants of the globe agree in considering it shameful to expose that part of their body, even to men; and in the east, where, from climate, you are allowed, and from respect to your superiors, the generality of men are forced to go naked, all agree in covering their waist, which is called their _nakedness_, though it is really the only part of their body that is covered. We see even that there was a curse[105] attended the mere seeing that part of the body of a parent, and not instantly throwing a covering over it.

I do not propose discussing at large the arguments for or against the time of the beginning to circumcise. The scripture has given such an account of it, that, when weighed with the promise so exactly kept to the end, seems to me to be a very rational one. But, considering all revelation out of the question, I think there is no room to institute any free or fair inquiry. I give no pre-eminence to Moses nor his writings. I suppose him a profane author; but, till those that argue against his account, and maintain circumcision was earlier than Abraham, shall shew me another profane writer as old as Moses, as near the time they say it began as Moses was to the time of Abraham, I will not argue with them in support of Moses against Herodotus, nor discuss who Herodotus’s Phenicians, and who his Egyptians were that circumcised. Herodotus knew not Abraham nor Moses, and, compared to their days, he is but as yesterday. Those Phenicians and Egyptians might, for any thing he knew at his time, have received circumcision from Abraham or Ishmael, or some of their posterity, as the Abyssinians or Ethiopians, whom he refers to, actually say they did, which Herodotus did not know, it is plain, though he mentions they were circumcised. This tradition of the Abyssinians merits some consideration from what they say of it themselves, that they were, in the earliest time, circumcised before they left their native country, and settled in Tigrè. From this they derive no honour, nor do they pretend to any. It would have been otherwise, if the æra fixed upon had been the reign of Menilek, son of Solomon, when they first embraced Judaism under a monarch. This would have made a much more brilliant epoch in their history, whilst it was probable that they adopted circumcision under the countenance of Azarias, the son of Zadok, the high priest, and the representatives of the twelve tribes who came with him at that time from Jerusalem.

It seems to me very extraordinary, that, if circumcision was originally a Jewish invention, all those nations to the south should be absolutely ignorant of it, while others to the northward were so early acquainted with it; for none of those nations up the Nile (excepting the Shepherds) either know or practise it to this day; though, ever since the 1400th year before Christ, they have been in the closest connection with the Jews. This would rather make me believe, that the rite of circumcision went northward from the plain of Mamrè, for it certainly made no progress southward from Egypt. We see it obtained in Arabia, by Zipporah[106], Moses’s wife, circumcising her son upon their return to Egypt. Her great anxiety to have that operation immediately performed, shews that her’s was a Judaical circumcision; there was no sin that attended the omission of this operation in Egypt, but God had said to Abraham[107], “The soul that is not circumcised shall be cut off from Israel.”