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 ETHIOPIAN

571

ETSCHMIADZIN

matters spiritual, his influence is nevertheless very limited in other directions, owing to the fact that he is a stranger. The administrative authority is vested in the Etchagu^, who also has jurisdiction over the regu- lar clergy. This functionary is always chosen from among the monks and is a native. Legislation concern- ing the clergy is always regulated by a special code, of which the fundamental principles are contained in the Felha nagasht. Only the regular clergy observe celi- bacy, and the facility with which orders are conferred makes the number of priests very large.

Language ami Literature. — Although the races in- habiting Ethiopia have very different origins, only the Semitic family of tongues is represented among them. This is one of the results of the conquest made in olden days by the immigrants from the African Conti- nent. Two dialects were spoken by these tribes, the Gheez, which is akin to Sabean, and a speech more akin to Minean, the tongue which later developed into Amharic. In the course of time Gheez ceased to be a spoken language, but it gave rise to two vernacular dialects, Tigre and Tigrai, which have supplanted it. No longer in popular use, Gheez has always remained the language of the Church and of literature. Am- haric did not become a literary language till much later. As for the other two, even in our own day they have hardly begun to be written. The beginnings of Gheez literature are connected with the evangeliza- tion of the country. The earliest document we pos- sess is the translation of the Bible, which dates from the fifth, or perhaps the fourth, century. Christian in its origin, Gheez literature has remained so in its pro- ductions, most of which are apocrypha, hagiographi- cal compositions, or theological works. History and poetry have only a secondary place in it, and these are the only subjects in which we find any original effort; almost everything else is translation from the Greek, Coptic, or Arabic. Most of its manuscripts have come down to us without date or author's name, and it is no easy task to follow the history of letters in this coun- try. As far as we know at present, the fifteenth seems to have been the great literary century of Ethiopia. To the reign of Zar'a Ya'qob (I4.'M-68) belong the principal compositions of which the history is known. The wars against Adal and against Ahmed Ibn Ibra- him, in the sixteenth century, arrested thi5 literary movement. The decline began after the civil wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the coming of Amharic as a literary language completed it. The earliest writings in Amharic date from the fourteenth century, and about the time of the Portu- guese missions it was beginning to supplant Gheez. The Jesuits made use of it to reach the people more surely, and henceforward Ciheez tends to become al- most exclusively a liturgical language. At the pre.s- ent day it is nothing else, Amharic having altogether taken its place in other departments, and it may be that at no distant date Amharic will supplant Gheez even as the language of the Church.

Job Ludolf, a German, in the seventeenth century, was the first to organize the study of Ethiopian sub- jects. To him we owe the first grammar and the first dictionary of the Gheez language. After a period of neglect these studies were taken up once more in the second half of the nineteenth century by Professor Dillmann, of Berlin, and, besides incomparable works on the grammar and lexicography, we are indebted to him for the publication of many texts. Thanks to the extension of philological, historical, and patristic studios, the study of this language has spread in our own times to a greater and greater degree. Works of the first importance have been published on the Hterature by Professors Ba,ssett, Bezold, Guidi, Litt- mann, and Prstorius, as also by Charles, Estcvos- Pereira, Perruchon, and Tourai.so. The Amharic, too, has in.spired a number of studies, whether of its grammar, of its lexicography, or of its texts; the

works of Massaja, Isenberg, d'Abbadie, Prsetorius, Guidi, Mondon-Kidailhet, and Afevork have served to definitively place it within the domain of Oriental studies.

Maspkro. Histoire ancientie dcs peuptes de V Orient classique (Paris, 1S95-99); Bddge, A History of Egypt (London, 1902); Amherst of Hackney. A Sketch of Egyptian History (London, 1906); Basset, Etudes sur I'histoire d'Ethiopie (Pans. 1882); Rossini, Note per la storia litteraria ahissina in Rend, delta R. A. dei Lincei (Rome, 1899), VIII; Littmann, Gescttichte der atkiopischen Litteratur in Geschichte der ctiristlichen Lilteraturen des Orients (Leipzig, 1907); Beccari, Notizia e saggi di opere

inediti riguardanti la storia di Etfiiopia (Rome, 1903 ):

Brdce, .4 Journey to the Sources of the Nile (London, 1790); Glaser. Die Abcs.nnier in Arabien und Afritca (Munich, 1895); Massaia. / Tniei trenta cinque anni nelV alta Etiopia (Rome, 1895); LuDOLF. Historia ^thiopica (Frankfort, 1681); Id., ^d historiam wthiupiaini commentarius (Frankfort. 1691).

M. Chaine. Ethiopian Versions o£ the Bible. See Versions

OF THK BiBI.E.

Etschmiadzin, a famous Armenian monastery, since 1441 the ecclesiastical capital of the schismatic Armenians, and seat of their patriarch or catholicos (q. v.), whom the greater part of the Non-Uniat Ar- menian Church acknowledge as their head. It is situ- ated in Russian territory, in the extreme south of the Caucasus, on the River Aras near the city of Erivan. As early as the fifth or sixth century, if not earlier, a monastery existed there attached to the royal resi- dence of Valarshapat, itself the immemorial national centre of Armenia, .\ccording to national tradi- tion, more or less reliable, the priraatial see of Armenia was founded here by Saint Gregory Illuminator, the Apostle of Armenia, early in the fourth century. On the site of his famous vision of "the descent of the only Begotten One" (Descendit Unigenitus=in .Arme- nian, Etschmiadzin), the anniversary of which is still kept as a national feast, he built a chapel, and in time a splendid church and a monastery arose there, around which centred the national and religious life of Ar- menia until the middle of the fifth century, when, ow- ing first to the invasions of Caucasian honles and then to Persian ambition and persecution, there began the long series of wanderings that recall the story of the monks of Durham with St. Cuthbert's body. During these centuries both clergy and people valued most highly the right arm of St. Gregory; its possessor was practically considered the legitimate patriarch. After many removals, first to Dowin (Duin, Tvin) and then to other places, the patriarchal see was eventually located in the city of Sis, in Cilicia (Lesser Armenia), where it remained from 1293 to 1441; at the former (late the relic was saitl to have been miraculously brought to Sis from Egypt, whither it had been taken by the Mamelukes. When the small Christian prin- cipality of Lesser Armenia, long upheld by the Cru- sades (1097-1375), was at la.st destroyed, the national and religious life of its people naturally tiirned again towards the earlier venerable centre, in Northern or Greater .Armenia. After the death, at Sis (1440), of Patriarch Joseph II, irregularities occurred in the elec- tion of the new patriarch, Gregory Musapekian, which northern bishops were willing to overlook if he woukl transfer his .see to Greater Armenia. On his refusal a new election was held at Etschmiadzin where, it is said, about seven hundred bishops and archpriests (vartapeds) as.scmblod and elected Kirakos Virabetzi, with whom begins the series of patriarchs of Etschmi- adzin. By some stratagem the monastery is said to liave secured from Sis the possession of the famous relic of St. Gregory. A patriarchal succession, how- ever, was, and is still, maintained at Sis, where what purport to be th(^ selfsame relics are shown and ven- erated. There are, moreover, Armenian (schismatic) patriarchs at Aghtamar, Jerusalem (1311) and Con- stantinople (14r>l), the latter for the Armenians of the Ottoman Rmpire, .also an independent Archbishop of Lembcrg. Several patriarchs of Etschmiadzin, Ste- phen V (1541), Michael of Seljaste (1.5(J4), David IV