scholarly journals Ethiopian Dynastic Marriage and the Bétä Esra'él

Aethiopica ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 50-63
Author(s):  
Richard Pankhurst

 Significant contacts between the Ethiopian State and the Bétä Esraʾél began in the late sixteenth century with the move of the imperial capital to the Lake Ṭana area, which was relatively near to Fälaša settlements in or around the Sämén mountains.At about this time Ḥarägo, an apparently high-born Fälaša woman, supposedly the sister of Gedéwon, the Bétä Esraʾél ruler of Sämén, and reportedly a recent convert to Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, became the consort, or as the Jesuits preferred to say a “concubine” of the redoubtable Emperor Särṣä Dengel. She bore him four sons. One, Zä-Maryam, was chosen as heir to the throne, but died before he could succeed. The second, Yaʿqob, actually ascended the imperial throne, but was too young to make any significant achievement. Two others, Keflä Maryam, and Mätäko, threw in their lot with their kinsman Gedéwon, and thus played a notable role in imperial and/or Fälaša local politics.There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that Ethiopian Christians regarded Ḥarägo, or her children, as in any way different from the rest of the royal family, or that they were in any way discriminated against on account of their non-Christian, or Bétä Esraʾél, origin.The idea of a dynastic alliance with the Bétä Esraʾél was subsequently revived by Emperor Susneyos’s rebel brother Ras Yämanä Krestos. He proposed giving his daughter, the Emperor’s niece, to the Sämén ruler Gedéwon’s son and heir Walay. Ras Yämanä Krestos’ rebellion was, however, crushed, after which Susneyos exiled his brother to Gojjam, and forbade the proposed Bétä Esraʾél dynastic alliance. As a Roman Catholic, seeking military support from the Portuguese, and an adherent of the Jesuits, who wished to cleanse Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity of “Judaic” elements, he would moreover have been predisposed against playing the Fälaša card.The subsequent decline of Bétä Esraʾél power, the disappearance of the Fälaša ruling dynasty, and the growing importance of fire-arms, which the Fälaša lacked, created a new strategic and political climate in which dynastic alliances between the Ethiopian monarchy and the Bétä Esraʾél no longer had any place.

1986 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Hennessey Cummins

The long-traditional view of the Roman Catholic Church in Spanish America as a monolithic, wealthy, and all powerful institution has been gradually modified by successive studies over the last thirty years. From these examinations emerges the picture of a complex institution characterized by diversity, and internal conflict. New research continues to enlarge and clarify understanding of the Church's role as an institution of the Spanish empire.What follows will, in highlighting the colonial Church's relationship to the Spanish crown, add to this view of it as a complex and diverse institution. An examination of crown policy with regard to Church finance in the sixteenth century shows that the episcopal hierarchy of the Mexican colonial Church had a subordinate relationship to the crown in the era of the Counter Reformation. Rather than a strong Church influencing the crown, what emerges is the portrait of a relatively weak, dependent institution, supported by the king. The secular church hierarchy had only enough power to carry out its function and serve as a counterpoint to the religious orders, not enough to achieve financial independence on its own. The basis for this relationship lies in the patrimonial nature of Castilian government and its dominant position over the Church hierarchy because of the Patronato Real.


2012 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 425-441
Author(s):  
Miroljub Jevtic

The majority of the Christian world today is affected by weakening adherence to principles of religious practice. The reverse is the case in the countries of predominantly Orthodox tradition. After the collapse of communism, all types of human freedom were revived, including the religious one. The consequence is the revival of the Orthodox Christianity. It is reflected in the influence of the Orthodox Church on the society. Today, the most respected institutions in Russia and Serbia are the Russian and Serbian Orthodox Church, respectively. Considering the decline of the Western Christianity, the revival of the Orthodox Church has raised hopes that the Western Christianity can be revived, too. Important Christian denominations, therefore, show great interest in including the Orthodox Church in the general Christian project. It is particularly evident in the Roman Catholic Church foreign policy. The Roman Catholic Church is attempting to restore relations with Orthodox churches. In this sense, the most important churches are the Russian and the Serbian Church. But, establishing relations with these two is for Vatican both a great challenge and a project of great significance.


1992 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-238
Author(s):  
Howard Clark Kee

“[T]he vitality of the church is regained when it recovers the revolutionary insights of its founders, Jesus and Paul. In the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century and in the renewal movements that have taken place in both Roman Catholic and Protestant circles in the present century, it has been the fresh appropriation of the insights of Jesus and Paul about the inclusiveness of people across ethnic, racial, ritual, social, economic, and sexual boundaries that has restored the relevance and vitality of Christian faith and has lent to Christianity as a social and intellectual movement a positive, humane force in the wider society.”


Author(s):  
Samir Simaika ◽  
Nevine Henein

This chapter discusses Marcus Simaika's involvement in the dispute between the Copts and Ethiopians regarding what is known as Deir al-Sultan or the Imperial Monastery in Jerusalem. Ethiopia has long been acquainted with monotheism, and the Ethiopian Church is the largest of all the Oriental Orthodox churches. The Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria has a longstanding relationship with the Ethiopian Orthodox Tawahedo Church and the Eritrean Orthodox Tawahedo Church. Tawahedo means 'unified,' referring to the single unified nature of Christ, as opposed to the belief in the two natures of Christ held by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. The patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and many others had refused to accept the two-natures doctrine decreed by the Council of Chalcedon in 451, and these churches are sometimes referred to as monophysite. Simaika maintained that Deir al-Sultan belonged to the Coptic community from time immemorial.


1993 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Questier

This article is concerned with one aspect of movement between religions in England at the end of the Jacobean period, namely the polemical use which could be made of the convert to Protestantism. The increasing likelihood of a successful conclusion of the Spanish Match negotiations had for some time been threatening the Protestant Establishment. In this climate, prominent changes of religion were of great interest to polemicists of both sides. As in Elizabeth’s reign, Protestants could attack the Church of Rome by focusing on the apostates from it. The point of reference from which this polemical use of conversion will be analysed is the best-selling vitriolic anti-Catholic tract written by the wavering Protestant minister John Gee, entitled The Foot out of the Snare. Gee is familiar to modern historians as a source on Roman Catholic priests in the 1620s but he is important also for the way in which he was employed as an anti-Catholic writer. His tract originated with the clerical group which gathered around Archbishop Abbot, clerics distinguished by their violent opposition to encroaching Roman Catholicism, evident in the likely success of the Spanish Marriage project and the conversions which had started to occur as the political climate changed. Gee’s tract may be used as a starting point to explore some of the politics and literature of conversion at this time.


2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-334
Author(s):  
Peter McCullough

This article aims to provide an introductory historical sketch of the origins of the Church of England as a background for canon law in the present-day Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church. Written by a specialist for non-specialists, it summarises the widely held view among ecclesiastical historians that if the Church of England could ever be said to have had a ‘normative’ period, it is not to be found in its formative years in the middle decades of the sixteenth century, and that, in particular, the origins of the Church of England and of what we now call ‘Anglicanism’ are not the same thing.


2013 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 297-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita Hannig

Abstract This article addresses a key problem at the intersection of medicine and religion: how do people fashion themselves into moral subjects in the midst of acute bodily suffering? In particular, how can we situate the wounded, porous body of obstetric fistula in relation to Ethiopian Orthodox Christian ideals of purity and containment? Through an analysis of regimens of embodied piety among Orthodox Christians in the Amhara region of Ethiopia, this article seeks to delineate the multiplicity of ways in which fistula sufferers are able to exercise their religiosity in the face of their physical affliction, and how they use the very symbols that would seem to alienate them to achieve a powerfully enlightened subject position. This study thus complicates static notions of the sacred to reveal the recursive nature of holiness, and shows that recognition of the body’s imperfection is built into the very system of Orthodox belief and practice.


2010 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 753-782 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Darlage

Studies of early modern Anabaptism have shown that many Anabaptists sought to model their communities after the examples of the New Testament and the early church before the “fall” of the church into a coercive, sword-wielding institution through the person of Constantine in the fourth centuryc.e.The Anabaptists claimed that one had to voluntarily choose to become a Christian through believer's baptism and suffer for his or her faith just as the martyrs of old had done in the face of Roman persecution. During the course of the sixteenth century, their Protestant and Roman Catholic enemies did not disappoint, as hundreds of Anabaptists were executed for their rejection of “Christendom.” To the “magisterial” Christians, Anabaptists were dangerous heretics because they denied the God-given power of spiritual and secular authorities.


2008 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-152
Author(s):  
Frederick Quinn

ABSTRACTAlthough there is a strong movement within Anglicanism to produce a Covenant, this article argues against such an approach. Postponing dealing with today's problems by leaving them for a vaguely worded future document, instead of trying to clarify and resolve them now, and live in peace with one another, is evasive action that solves nothing. Also, some covenant proposals represent a veiled attempt to limit the role of women and homosexuals in the church.The article's core argument is that covenants were specifically rejected by Anglicans at a time when they swept the Continent in the sixteenth century. The Church of England had specifically rejected the powerful hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church and the legalism of the Puritans in favor of what was later to become the Anglican via media, with its emphasis on an informal, prayerful unity of diverse participants at home and abroad. It further argues the Church contains sufficient doctrinal statements in the Creeds, Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral of 1886, 1888, and the Baptismal Covenant in the American Church's 1979 Book of Common Prayer.Covenant proponents argue their proposed document follows in the tradition of classic Anglicanism, but Quinn demonstrates this is not the case. He presents Richard Hooker and Jeremy Taylor as major voices articulating a distinctly Anglican perspective on church governance, noting Hooker ‘tried to stake out parameters between positions without digging a ditch others could not cross. Hooker placed prudence ahead of doctrinal argument.’ Taylor cited the triadic scripture, tradition and reason so central to Anglicanism and added how religious reasoning differs from mathematical and philosophical reasoning. The author notes that the cherished Reformation gift of religious reasoning is totally unmentioned in the flurry of documents calling for a new Anglican Covenant.


1988 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 421-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Hennessey Cummins

Historians have long been interested in shedding light on the numerous, habitual transactions that constitute economic life at its basic level. Yet, questions about how men transact business as individuals, and how they feel about it are largely unanswered by traditional political and bureaucratic records, perhaps because these activities were so commonplace to the society, so well-known and unremarkable to contemporaries as to obviate remark in the records. A study of the extensive records of the Roman Catholic Church, however, can shed light on this, and many other aspects of Spanish colonial society in Mexico.


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