Page 95 - LD215 History of the Church in Africa A4 final

The Nile Corridor Churches

the local languages, translated Scriptures into Ge’ez, preached,
planted monasteries and churches, and traveled extensively
throughout the Axumite lands. (1996, 64)

Abba Aregawi built a monastery church at Debre Damo, which still
exists. As Baur notes:

It is this church which was granted extensive tracts of lands by
King Gabre Maskal around 550. This is how the policy of land
endowments began and through the centuries was followed by
almost all rulers and made the Church the largest land owner in
the country. (36)

The influence of the Nine Saints appears to have been remarkable, for
they set a pattern for the church. Largely monks, who were considered
to be “leaders in holiness,” accomplished the expansion of the church.
Baur continues:

With the advent of the Monks, there also began the educational
and literary work of the church. The translation of most books of
the Bible, chiefly from Greek and Syriac, is attributed to the Nine
Saints. The pious but uncritical mind of the Ethiopians added to
the Bible a number of apocryphal books.… All education began
around “parish” churches and was completed in monasteries.
The great indigenous scholar of that early time was Yared, the
creator of Ethiopian church music, which he wrote down in a
hymn book that followed the liturgical year. (36)

From that time until now, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church has held
the doctrinal position called Monophysitism—the teaching that in Jesus
the Lord, the divine and the human merged into a single, unique nature.
It is interesting to note that this teaching was condemned at the Council
of Chalcedon in A.D. 451, only a few years prior to the arrival of the
Nine Saints.

By the sixth century, Christianity was spreading more widely in the
Axumite Kingdom. Monasteries, even more than churches, became the
bases from which Christianity was established. However, the method
of conversion used by the monks leads one to inquire about the kind

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