Search Results

is widely considered the first anchoritic monk to be influential throughout the Christian Mediterranean world. The Life of Anthony, written by Alexandrian bishop Athanasius (d. 373 CE), became a model both for late antique hagiography and for the anchoritic lifestyle that subsequently flourished in the eastern Roman Empire. Anthony’s fame also had a significant impact on the spread of monasticism in the western Roman Empire, where the Life was read by such patristic writers as Jerome and Augustine.

The main source for Anthony’s life is Athanasius’s Life of Anthony written in Greek between the years 356 and 362 The influence of this work on the genre of Christian hagiography cannot be overestimated It was quickly translated into Latin by Evagrius of Antioch as well as into Coptic Arabic Syriac and other languages of the eastern empire Jerome was directly inspired by it to write the first hagiographies in ...

Ethiopian monk and scholar, was born ‘Eskender to a noble Amhara family in the early 1600s and is also known as Abba Gorgoryos, Gregory, and Gregorio. Gorgoryos was ordained a monk in the Ethiopian Church in the early 1620s. In 1625 the Jesuit father Gaspare Paez introduced him to Catholicism to which he converted before the beginning of the anti Catholic persecution of the 1630s When he embraced the Roman faith he also took the name Gorgoryos by which he became known throughout Europe He was most likely the first Ethiopian monk to be reordained Catholic which thrust him at the heart of early modern relations between the Ethiopian elite and the Roman Catholic Church After his conversion Gorgoryos joined the Jesuit mission by becoming the secretary to Father Afonso Mendes 1579 1656 third Catholic Patriarch of Ethiopia and head of the Jesuit mission Following Fasiladas s expulsion of ...

Ethiopian monastic leader commemorated as a saint by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahdo Church, was born 21 May 1214 in Begemder Province. Having refused to marry, Iyasus Moa left his home and traveled while already in his thirties to the ancient northern monastery of Debre Damo in Tigre Province. There, under the tutelage of the abbot Abba Yohanni, he completed a novitiate of seven years before becoming a monk. Leaving Tigre, he traveled south and eventually settled at Lake Hayq in Amhara Province. Although tradition claims that two earlier churches had existed on the island in the lake from late Aksumite (ninth–tenth century) times, its importance certainly dates from the middle of the thirteenth century and the arrival of Iyasus Moa (c. 1248).

According to several traditions it was while serving at Debre Hayq also known as Debre Nagwadgwad that Iyasus Moa made an alliance with the Amhara leader Yekunno Amlak ...

Coptic patriarch (pope) of Alexandria, was born Nazir Gayed on 3 August 1923 in the important Coptic center of Assiyut. He was educated in various parts of Egypt and graduated from Cairo University in 1943. As an undergraduate he gained degrees in history, literature, and theology and was a student of archaeology and classical Arabic. In spite of the enormous demands of high office, he should be counted among the elite quartet of leading theologians in the Egyptian Church.

Nazir Gayed experienced a spiritual call to the monastic life and entered the Monastery of the Syrians in the Western Desert in July 1954. As Father Antonious El-Souriani, he received a further vocation to the life of a hermit and between 1954 and 1962 lived alone in a desert cave for extended periods.

On Sunday 31 October 1971 an altar ballot took place in Cairo and a small ...

Christian abbot and writer was born near present day Sohag in central Egypt and as a child entered the nearby White Monastery at Atripe headed by his maternal uncle Pjol Shenute advanced rapidly through the monastic hierarchy and ultimately became abbot at the death of Pjol around 385 Shenute expanded the monastery substantially at its height it is said to have housed twenty two hundred men and eighteen hundred women in separate but connected communities Shenute rigorously supervised the lives of the monks under his control inhabitants of the White Monastery lived under a strict monastic rule and carried out both physical labor and spiritual effort on behalf of the monastery The White Monastery became an important economic force in its area and Shenute an important spiritual leader who used his monastery s assets for local charitable purposes and to wield political influence Shenute presented himself as a fierce foe ...

third Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, was born on 18 September 1917 in Mahedere Maryam, Gonder; his birth name was Melaku. His parents were Welde Mikael Wondimu and Zewditu Kasa. Welde Mikael met Zewditu in Yerez, Gojjam, when he was in a military service in the area, and took her to Mahdere Maryam, Gonder, where she gave birth to Tekle. But because of the natural death of the father, Zewditu went back to her place of origin with the baby.

Tekle began traditional church education near his home and later, after the death of his mother, in Yerez Michael near Bichena, Gojjam, where he studied church poetry (qene) under Memher Lisane Werq He then went back to Mahedere Maryam the place of his birth and baptism and started serving as deacon But when he did not find things as he wished them to be he ...

Ethiopian monk and intellectual, was also known as Pietro Malbazó, Mlheso, and Indiano. Little is known about his early years, but in all likelihood he left the monastery of Debre Libanos while the area was ravaged by the war between Christian Ethiopia and the Muslim Sultanate of Adal (1529–1543). He traveled to Italy via Jerusalem in 1538, exploiting a route well known to early-modern Ethiopian pilgrims. Once in Rome he became prior of Santo Stefano; his tenure coincided with the institution’s golden era, one during which the hospice hosted an average of twenty to thirty monks before becoming deserted during the era of the Jesuit mission to Ethiopia (1555–1632). Tesfa Seyon used his linguistic skills to develop an exclusive network of acquaintances and befriend some of the most important Roman personalities of the time—among which was the powerful Farnese—who in turn supported both his work and the Santo Stefano ...