page_title: Gunda Gunde Monastery
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Gunda Gunde Monastery / History
context_page_description: Gunda Gunde Monastery is an Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo monastery located to the south of Adigrat in the Misraqawi Zone of the northern Tigray Region in Ethiopia. It is known for its prolific scriptorium, as well as its library of Ge'ez manuscripts. This collection of over 220 volumes, all but one dating from before the 16th century, is one of the largest collections of its kind in Ethiopia.
context_section_description: Gunda Gunde was founded by followers of Saint Ewostatewos seeking a refuge from the persecutions of their beliefs in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, finding it in the remote region of the modern Irob woreda. According to a tradition recorded by Justin de Jacobis, the monastery was built on a crater where a dragon named Gabella dwelled, which was appeased with the periodic sacrifice of young women until the monks' prayers tamed it.
  The remoteness of the monastery attracted other groups at odds with the mainstream Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. One of these dissidents were the Stephanites, who were accused of failing to venerate the cross and the Virgin Mary; Gebre Masih, abbot between 1475/1476 until his death around 1520, was one Stephanite, while another was Ezra, a monk belonging to Gunda Gunde. Its remoteness also saved Gunda Gunde from the 16th century ravages of the Muslim assault by the forces of Imam Ahmad Gragn, which had plundered or destroyed many churches and other centers of Ethiopian Christianity.
  When Mgr. de Jacobis visited Gunda Gunde in the 1840s, the internal disorder of the Ethiopian Church had made it receptive to his missionary work: several monks converted to Catholicism, and its abbot Walda Giyorgis (died 1850) was openly pro-Catholic. The community's support led to the establishment of the first modern Catholic parish at Gwala, one of the fiefs of the monastery. The monastery's support of Catholicism came to an end with Walda Giyorgis' death and the election of a new abbot.
  The next notable European visit was by the Italian scholar, Antonio Mordini, who visited the monastery more than once in 1940. However, he did not publish an account of his visit until 1954. Several years later Beatrice Playne, excited at the prospect of finding a religious site that had avoided Ahmad Gragn's attention, visited the monastery in 1948. After travelling for two days across several roadless mountain ranges, she found Gunda Gunde in a narrow valley with "cultivated gardens on either bank... irrigated by a careful system of wooden, trough-like pipes and primitive aqueducts". Unable to enter the compound due to her gender (Ethiopian tradition forbids women from entering monastery grounds), she had to be content with having the monks bring out selections of ancient manuscripts from its library and paintings from its church.
  Just as its remoteness had discouraged Imam Ahmad from visiting, so the Derg likewise failed to impose their authority on this distant corner of Ethiopia -- although the Tigray People's Liberation Front reportedly held a field conference at Gunda Gunde in the late 1980s.
caption: Gunda Gunde Gospels, parchment bound between wooden boards covered with remains of leather, c.1540, (Stephanites), Walters Art Museum
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