If it is true that the Christian Europe of the Middle Ages was shaped by monasticism, more so it can be said of the Ethiopian Christianity. Ethiopia converted to Christianity around the year 330 through the work of two Syrian young brothers who were taken prisoners in the Red Sea and brought to the court…

From its very foundation, Debre Libanos grew in prestige and power until it surpassed all the other monasteries, thanks in the first place to the personality of its founder, Tekle Haimanot, but also to the permanent support of political power. It is still today at the head of the monastic life in Ethiopia. The data…

Among the many Ethiopian monasteries Debre Damo deserves to be mentioned first. Not because it is the largest or the most important, but because it concentrates in itself certain original characteristics that do not occur in others. In the first place, its antiquity. Founded by Aregawi, one of the ‘Nine Saints’, at the beginning of…

If we mention the monastery of Hayk (or Hayq) among the three chosen for this dossier, it is certainly not because of the importance it has nowadays, but because of the one it had in the past, especially during the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, and because of its connection and that of its founder, Iyasus…