Holy Books for Holy Men: Illuminated Gospel Manuscripts in the Ethiopian Monastic Sphere, 1280-1340

Abstract

The adoption of Christianity as the state religion of the Aksumite kingdom in the fourth century prompted the rise of a rich Christian literary tradition in the Ethiopian highlands. Although robust historical and linguistic clues attest to the ancient roots of the Christian textual heritage in Gǝʿǝz, only a small number of manuscripts produced before the mid-fourteenth century survives. The dearth of extant manuscripts means that our knowledge of not only the early textual tradition, but also the nature of book culture in medieval Ethiopia remains fragmentary. Amid such gaps in knowledge and limited material survival, two exceptional manuscripts provide unparalleled insight into the historical conditions, religious concerns, and artistic choices that constituted the creation and use of manuscripts during a significant but otherwise poorly documented period of Ethiopian book culture. The Gospels of Iyäsus Moʾa, completed in 1280/81, and the Gospels of Krǝstos Täsfanä, completed sometime between 1317 and 1339, preserve evidence specifying their patrons, date of production, and the monastic community that made and used them. The gospels, both products of the monastery of Däbrä Ḥayq Ǝsṭifanos, also include extensive prefatory cycles of full-page narrative, devotional, and ornamental miniatures, making them two of the earliest securely dated Ethiopian illuminated manuscripts. Yet despite their substantial contextual components and sumptuous pictorial programs, the two gospel books have not been the subject of an in-depth study, either individually or together. With an aim to fill this lacuna and to advance a more holistic approach to the study of Ethiopian illuminated manuscripts, this dissertation offers the first detailed study of the artistic, textual, and material components of the Gospels of Iyäsus Moʾa and the Gospels of Krǝstos Täsfanä. I anchor this study in the historical and religious dynamics of the Däbrä Ḥayq Ǝsṭifanos monastery during the first century of its existence and demonstrate how the gospel book functioned as not just as a receptacle of sacred text, but as a sacred object itself integral to the self-conception of monks as holy men.