page_title: Christianity in Ethiopia
section_title: The Sabbatarian controversy
hierarchical_section_title: Christianity in Ethiopia / The Sabbatarian controversy
caption_attribution_description: According to the Bradt Guide Ethiopia by Phillip Briggs (4th ed., November 2005), "Bet Mercurios is a cave church. It was orginally used for secular purposes, and may well be around 1,400 years old. The presence of iron shackles in a trench suggests it may have served as a jail or a courtroom." "The interior is partially collapsed - the entrance was rebuilt from scratch in the late 1980s, but it does boast a beautiful if rather faded 15th-century wall frieze of what looks like three wise men or a group of saints."
context_page_description: Christianity in Ethiopia is the largest religion in the country and dates back to the ancient Kingdom of Aksum, when the King Ezana first adopted the faith. This makes Ethiopia one the first regions in the world to officially adopt Christianity. Various Christian denominations are now followed in the country. Of these, the largest and oldest is the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church an Oriental Orthodox church centered in Ethiopia. The Orthodox Tewahedo Church was part of the Coptic Orthodox Church until 1959, when it was granted its own patriarch by Coptic Orthodox Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of All Africa Cyril VI. Ethiopia was the only region of Africa to survive the expansion of Islam as a Christian state.
  The largest pre-colonial Christian church of Africa, the Ethiopian Church has a membership of 32 to 36 million, the majority of whom live in Ethiopia, and is thus the largest of all Oriental Orthodox churches. Next in size are the various Protestant congregations, who include 13.7 million Ethiopians. The largest Protestant group is the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus, with about 5 million members.
context_section_description: One of the more fervent monks appointed by Abuna Yakob was Abba Ewostatewos (c. 1273–1352). Ewostatewos designed a monastic ideology stressing the necessity for isolation from state influences. He insisted that the people and the Church return to the teachings of the Bible. Ewostatewos’s followers were called Ewostathians or Sabbatarians, due to their emphasis on observing the Sabbath on Saturday. 
  Church and state officials united to denounce Ewostatewos, but they were unable to discredit him because he avoided serious sins, and they were unable to effectively argue against him due to his knowledge of Scripture. Frustrated, the Church and state officials simply declared him a deviant due to his love for Old Testament customs that were falling out of favor in the Alexandrian Church in the thirteenth century. Ewostatewos and his followers were persecuted, and Ewostatewos himself died in exile in Armenia in 1352.
     	
  The Ewostathians retreated into remote northeastern Ethiopia to escape the society that refused to ordain them, drove them out of churches, fired them from official positions, drove them out of the court, and in some cases, drove them out of towns completely. Over time, however, the religious zeal of the Sabbatarians resulted in missionary activities that successfully converted adjacent non-Christian communities and, within a few generations, Ewostathian monasteries and communities spread throughout the Eritrean highlands.
  The spread of Ewostathianism alarmed the Ethiopian establishment who still considered them to be dangerous due to their refusal to follow state authorities. In response, in 1400, Emperor Dawit I (r. 1380–1412) invited the Sabbatarians to come to court and participate in a debate. Abba Filipos led the Ewostathian delegation, which argued their case with passion, refusing to repudiate the Sabbath, until the Ethiopian bishop ordered that the delegation be arrested. The goal of the arrests was to kill Ewostathianism by removing its leaders, but its localized nature allowed it to survive, and, as a result, the arrest of the Ewostathians only led to a rift in the Ethiopian Church, between the ruling class’s traditional Christianity and what was becoming a large movement of Ewostathian Christians.
  Emperor Dawit realized that jailing the Sabbatarians was a mistake and ordered their release in 1403 to celebrate a Christian victory over Muslims. Dawit decreed that the Sabbatarians would be allowed to observe the Sabbath on Saturday and return to their normal activities, but he also decreed that Sunday would be observed as the only Sabbath at court.
  After Dawit's proclamation, Ewostathianism enjoyed impressive growth. This growth was noticed by Dawit's successor, Emperor Zara Yakob (r. 1434–1468) who realized that the energy of the Sabbatarians could be useful in reinvigorating the church and promoting national unity. The Church, when Yakob took the throne, was impressively widespread, but the consequence of so many different peoples being part of the same church was that there were often many different messages spread throughout the empire, as the clergy was split between followers of Alexandria and Ewostathians, who refused to follow the hierarchy of Alexandria.
  Emperor Yakob called for a compromise in 1436, meeting with two bishops, Mikail and Gabriel, sent by the see of St. Mark. Yakob convinced the bishops that if Alexandria agreed to accept the Ewostathian view of the Sabbath, then the Ewostathians would agree to recognize Alexandrian authority. Next, Yakob travelled to Aksum for his coronation, remaining there until 1439 and reconciling with the Sabbatarians, who agreed to pay feudal dues to the emperor.
  In 1450, the conflict officially came to an end, as Mikail and Gabriel agreed to recognize the Sabatarians' observance of the Sabbath, and the Sabbatarians agreed to adopt the sacrament of Holy Orders, which they had previously considered to be illegitimate due to its dependence on the authority of the church in Alexandria.
caption: 15th century wall frieze at the Church of Bet Mercurios, Lalibela, Ethiopia
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