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Rh responded by sending him bishops. The Monophysite character of Ethiopian Christianity is enough to contradict this story, and there are other improbabilities connected with it. We must always associate Abyssinian Christianity with the Coptic, not with the Byzantine type. About this time there was a persecution of Christians in South Arabia under Dunaan, a Jewish usurper, and among the martyrs was Aretas, who had come from Auzume as governor of the province. He and his wife and a number of other Christians were cruelly martyred in a pit of fire.

Monasticism was introduced into Ethiopia in the fifth century, and it has remained as one of the institutions of Abyssinian Christianity down to the present day. There is a large number of monks and nuns in the country, as well as married priests after the manner of the Oriental Churches generally. The Ethiopic canon of Scriptures is of curious interest. It contains several books not included in the canons of the Eastern and Western Catholic Churches. The Old Testament has all the Septuagint books except Maccabees, together with the Books of Enoch, Jubilees, iv. Ezra, and other apocryphal writings, and the New Testament books are reckoned at thirty-five—eight books of the Canon Law (called Sinodos) being added to the usual twenty-seven.

After the sixth century Abyssinia was almost entirely lost to view for nearly a thousand years—a section of Christendom cut off from the main body of the Church by the intruding Mohammedan power. For a long time, however, it contrived to get its metropolitan from Egypt, and so acknowledged its ecclesiastical relationship to the Coptic patriarchate of Alexandria. The canon required twelve bishops for the consecration of a metropolitan; but there were only seven in Abyssinia. In the twelfth century the king requested that more might be appointed, and the Mohammedan government approved of the request; but the patriarch Gabriel refused it—an impolitic action which resulted in Abyssinia taking things into its own