Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/208

 quarter of Gondar. The echagheh governs the numerous convents of Abyssinia, and rules over the numerous dabtara, or "literati," who form the best instructed and most influential class of the country. They are laymen, but they usually possess more authority in the Church than the priest himself. The dabtara enjoys the usufruct of the ecclesiastical fiefs; he hires by the month, pays, reprimands, or dismisses the priest who celebrates mass, and often occupies the post of parish priest, which is quite a temporal office in Abyssinia. He composes the new hymns for each feast, and often introduces sarcastic remarks levelled against the bishops, and occasionally even warnings against the king.

Excepting the high dignitaries, the Abyssinian priests are not bound to celibacy, but are forbidden to make a second marriage. There are also numerous religious orders, comprising about 12,000 monks, without counting the nuns, who are mostly aged women driven by domestic troubles to retire from the world. Deposed princes, disgraced officials, and penniless soldiers also seek a home in the monasteries. A large part of the land belongs to the priests and monks, and would lie fallow were not the peasantry compelled to cultivate it.

The churches and convents are the schools of the country, and with the exception of those chosen from the dabtara class, all the teachers are priests or monks. They teach choral singing, grammar, poetry, and the recitation of the texts of their sacred books and commentaries, the classic lore of the Abyssinians being limited to these subjects. But although restricted, education is at least gratuitous, the teacher's duty being to give voluntarily to others the instruction imparted to him in the same way. It is also the duty of the ecclesiastics to give food and shelter to whomsoever asks it. Convents and even the ecclesiastical domains were formerly inviolable places of refuge; but degrees of sanctity have been gradually established in these refuges, and at present there are very few from which the sovereign cannot tear his victim and deliver him up to the executioner. Many convents which formerly attracted crowds of pilgrims are now no longer visited. A few, however, are still visited for the combined purpose of worship and trade, every place of pilgrimage being at the same time a "camp-meeting."

The Abyssinian theologians, more versed in the Old Testament than the New, are fond of justifying their surviving barbarous customs by the examples supplied by the lives of their pretended ancestors, David and Solomon. The bulk of the faithful, although far from zealous, and extremely ignorant of their tenets, rigidly observe the outward forms of their religion. They submit to the penances imposed by their confessors, purchase pardon for their sins by almsgiving to the Church, and observe the long fasts ordered them, unless indeed they can afford to pay for a substitute. They have two Lents, the most rigorous lasting forty-five days, besides two days of the week being set apart for the ordinary abstinence. As in Russia and Rumania, more than half of the year consists of days of feasts or fasts, apart from those set aside for the celebration of births, deaths, and marriages.

Every man has a baptismal and ordinary name, the former taken from their national saints, the latter composed of the first words spoken by his mother after his birth. The chiefs have a third name, consisting of their war-cry. Religious