Jean-Baptiste Piolet

“ This is a temperature slightly higher than that of Southern Spain, Italy, and Greece, but as, in Abyssinia, the summer is the rainy season, the heat is by no means so unbearable as the summer months of the South of Europe. The lands of this region form a series of vast plateaux, covered with rich pasturage, the grazing ground of great herds of sheep and cattle. The air is pure and dry, the temperature moderate, water plentiful and of good quality ”

“ The Ethiopian Church has, in addition to the priests and monks, an intermediate class, the Deftaras, or literati, who duty it is to preserve, interpret, and apply the written law, a vast collection of ordinances of the Lower Empire, modified and altered by the Copts in order to ensure the supremacy of the See of Alexandria over the whole of Ethiopia. ”

“ On the west, they have intermarried with the ancient Berbers, and with the blacks of the Soudan, who must not be confused with the Niger, Congo, and Zambesi tribes. On the east, Semitic peoples, Arabs and Himyarites, having crossed the Red Sea in the fourth century b.c., conquered the whole eastern coast of Africa, and settled chiefly in the province called, after them, Amhara. The invasion of the Galla tribes, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, spread through all this region, and especially towards the south. ”

“ The Vicariate of the Gallas, in the kingdom of Shoa, and among several tribes independent of the Negus, contains 18,000 Catholics and twenty churches. It is administered by twenty Capuchins, French for the most part, and eight secular priests. There are in Abyssinia, 200,000 Mussulmans, with much influence in the country, and filling the most important positions at court; 100,000 Pagans, and 50,000 Jews. ”

“ Then assuming that the two natures in Christ, human and divine, form but one, Mary is the mother of the divine as well as the human nature of her Son, and becomes by that very fact, almost equal to God the Father. ”

“ Their statistics give them 380 church members. The Catholic apostolate in Abyssinia must always exercise a courageous discretion and an unfailing mildness. The missionaries will have to contend for many years against the Eutychian fanaticism of the monks, and the quarrelsome nature of the inhabitants. Moreover, the frequent political revolutions of the past give little hope of settled peace and continued security.
Political Revolutions, Wars.—The Galla, or Oromo, race in the south has been the terror of Abyssinia ever since the sixteenth century. ”

“ Even in the nineteenth century, idolatrous superstitions, fetishism, serpent-worship, and the cult of various jinns, Jewish practices, rest on the Sabbath, and the custom of vowing children to the keeping of certain religious observances till the age of puberty are still active almost everywhere. ”

“ Under his rule Catholic priests rest assured of justice and protection throughout the whole Empire of Abyssinia.
Church Constitution.—Abyssinia is a province of the Patriarchate of Alexandria, the Church of Abyssinia is a daughter of the Egyptian Church, and there is nothing to show that the daughter ever really tried to withdraw herself from the maternal jurisdiction. To-day the Abyssinians are governed as they were in the time of St. ”