The churches are all 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 colonnade 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 barefooted, whenever you enter the church, and, if barefooted, you may go through every part of it, if you have any such curiosity, provided you are pure, that is, have not had connexion with woman 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.
Every person, of both sexes, under Jewish disqualifications, is obliged to observe this distance; and this is always a place belonging to the church, where, except 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.
On your first entering the church, you put off your shoes: but you must leave a servant there with them, or else they will be stolen, if good for anything, by the priests and monks, before you come out of the church. At entering you kiss the threshold and the 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 a 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 style very little superior to these performances of their own. They are placed like a frieze, 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 jawbone; and so of the rest. But the thing that surprised Mr. Bruce most was a kind of square miniature upon 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, or 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 ages of Christianity.
The primate or patriarch of the Abyssinian Church is styled Abuna. The first of these prelates mentioned in history is Tecla Haimanout, who distinguished himself by the restoration of the royal family, and the regulations which he made both in church and state. A wise ordinance was then enacted that the Abyssinians should not have it in their power to raise one of their own countrymen to the dignity of Abuna. As this dignitary of the church very seldom understands the language of the country, he has no share in the government. His chief employment is in ordinations, which ceremony is thus performed:—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 wish to be deacons. On this he makes two or three signs with a small cross in his hand, and blows with his mouth twice or thrice upon them, saying, “Let them be deacons.” Mr. Bruce once saw the whole army of Begemder, when just returned from shedding the blood of 10,000 men, made deacons by the Abuna, who stood about a quarter of a mile distant from them.
The Abyssinians neither eat nor drink with strangers, though they have no reason for this; and it is now a mere prejudice, because the old occasion for this regulation is lost. They break, or purify, however, every vessel a stranger of any kind shall have eaten or drunk out of. The custom, then, is copied from the Egyptians; and they have preserved it, though the Egyptian reason does no longer hold.
The Egyptians made no account of the mother what her state was; if the father was free, the child followed the condition of the father. This is strictly so in Abyssinia. The king’s child by a negro-slave, bought with money, or taken in war, is as near in succeeding to the crown as any one of twenty children that he has older than that one, and born of the noblest women of the country.
In Abyssinia, once every year they baptize all grown people, or adults. Mr. Bruce here relates what he himself saw on the spot, and what is nothing more than the celebration of our Saviour’s baptism:—“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 the intervals of the service, and, besides 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 sat 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, dipped the cross into the water, and all this time the firing, skirmishing, and praying, went on together. The priests with their 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 was 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 it 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.”
Mr. Bruce observed, 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. 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.