March. On the heights are found the rhododendrons, mosses, and lichens of the Alps.
Ethnology.—Few eastern or African nations exhibit such various aspects as the aborigines. Descendants of Cush are locally known as Agas, or "Freemen", and still form the basis of the Abyssinian nation. 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. These invasions and mingling of races in all ages have resulted in such diversity of type that the neighboring Arab tribes never speak of the country but as Habech (from which the name Abyssinia is derived), which means "a crowd" or "heap of sweepings". Abyssinia answers to the Upper, or Eastern, Ethiopia of the ancients, and comprises four provinces: Tigré, Amhara, Goggiam, and Shoa, four small kingdoms entrusted to as many Ras, or Negus, whence the title, negus-se-néghest, i.e., "King of Kings", assumed by the emperor of Abyssinia. The whole empire contains some 4,000,000 inhabitants. According to the vague traditional legend of the "Glorious memories of the Empire", or Kébrè-néghest, the dynasty of the Ethiopian kings goes back to King Solomon and Makkeda, Queen of Sheba; and by it the worship of the true God and the Mosaic law were brought to Ethiopia. Whatever truth may be in the legend, it is certain that ancient Ethiopia was evangelized in Apostolic times by the eunuch of Queen Candace, baptized by Philip the deacon, but was not wholly converted to the faith until the year 341, when St. Frumentius (Keddous Faramanatos), who was tutor to the emperor's two young sons, won his pupils to Christianity. It was they who made both the capital and the empire Christian. Nor could St. Athanasius, patriarch of Alexandria, find one whom he thought better fitted to rule this infant Church, than its first apostle, Frumentius.
Christianity.—The whole great Ethiopian empire did not, however, become Christian at that period; since, at the very gates of Gondar, the aboriginal tribes of the Komant are pagans to-day, as they have been for fourteen centuries. Moreover, even the converted provinces retain, despite their Christian faith and Christian morality, many traces of pagan and Judaic atavism. 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. In the sixteenth century, King Ghelaodieos found them so deeply rooted in the national habits that he tried to justify these in the eyes of the Church as purely civil customs in no way contrary to the laws of Christianity. So long as Christian Abyssinia could remain in touch with the Catholic Patriarch of Alexandria, it was preserved from the taint of Arianism, victorious almost everywhere else, as well as the errors of Macedonius and Nestorius. In the seventh century, however, the Caliph Omar, after his conquest of Egypt, came to an understanding with the Jacobite Patriarch Benjamin, whereby the Copts and the Abyssinians were forbidden all intercourse with the Roman Pontiff, but were promised toleration on that condition. Still, the Ethiopian Church, even after the ruin of the Alexandrian Church and of the Byzantine Empire in Egypt, resisted more or less successfully for nearly three centuries the heresies which infected all other churches of the East. Moreover, during the times of schism, and of Byzantine or Muslim persecution, it became the refuge of the proscribed Catholics. Many monuments of the tenth and eleventh centuries, due to the Egyptian refugees, bear witness to this fact by their Latin character, and it is also borne out by the manuscripts of Lalibéla.
Modern Missions.—Communication between Rome and Abyssinia became more difficult, and from the end of the eleventh to the beginning of the thirteenth century one could see no bond existing between Abyssinia and the centre of Catholicism. The Sovereign Pontiffs, nevertheless, have bestowed a constant solicitude on the Christians of Ethiopia. The first missionaries sent to their aid were the Dominicans, whose success, however, roused the fanaticism of the Monophysites against them, and caused their martyrdom. For more than a hundred years silence enfolded the ruins of this Church. At a later period, the fame of the Crusades having spread, pilgrim monks, on their return from Jerusalem, wakened once more, by what they told in the Ethiopian court, the wish to be reunited to the Church. The Acts of the Council of Florence tell of the embassy sent by the Emperor Zéra-Jacob with the object of obtaining this result (1452). The union was brought about; but on their home journey, the messengers, while passing through Egypt, were given up to the schismatic Copts, and to the Caliph, and put to death before they could bring the good news to their native land. More than a hundred years later, in 1557, the Jesuit Father Oviedo penetrated into Ethiopia. One of his successors, Father Paëz, succeeded in converting the Emperor Socinios himself. On 11 December, 1624, the Church of Abyssinia, abjuring the heresy of Eutyches and the schism of Dioscorus, was reunited to the true Church, a union which, unfortunately, proved to be only temporary. In 1632, the Negus Basilides mounted the throne. Addicted as he was to polygamy and to every vice, he showed himself the relentless enemy of Catholicism, and of its moral law. The Jesuits were handed over to the axe of the executioner, and Abyssinia remained closed to the missionaries until 1702. In that year, three Franciscans got as far as Gondar, the capital, where they converted several princes. The Negus wrote with his own hand to Clement XI, professing his submission to His Holiness. Once more the hope proved futile. A palace revolution overthrew the Negus, and heresy again assumed the reigns of power. From then until the middle of the nineteenth century, a silence as of death lay on the Church of Abyssinia. In 1846, the Holy See divided Ethiopia into two Apostolic vicariates: that of Abyssinia, trusted to the Lazarists, and that of Galla, given to the Capuchins. In the former, the labours and successes of M. de Jacobus awakened the jealousy of the schismatic clergy. An ex-Emir of Cairo, who had become Abouna of Ethiopia, and a man of low birth named Kassa, who had been anointed Negus under the name of Theodoros, joined forces to persecute the Catholics, drive out the missionaries,and put them to death. The Negus Johannes IV, who succeeded Theodoros, followed in his predecessor's footsteps. His reign of twenty years was a time of trouble and suffering for the Catholics of Abyssinia. At last, however, Menelik, the king of Shoa, who became Negus and was crowned in March, 1889, restored tranquility to the missions. 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 juris-
