Ethiopian Church Autocephaly ; The Coptic encyclopedia, volume 3

(CE:980a-984a) ETHIOPIAN CHURCH AUTOCEPHALY. In the middle of the fourth century, Saint ATHANASIUS, the twentieth patriarch of Alexandria, appointed Frumentius (Salama I) to be the first primate (ABUN) of Ethiopia. From then until the nineteenth century, negotiations between the two churches were generally restricted to Ethiopian requests for a new abun to be consecrated and sent to Ethiopia by the Coptic patriarch after the death of the previous abun. These requests were usually made through an embassy sent to Egypt with presents for the Coptic patriarch and the Muslim ruler of Egypt, without whose approval the new abun could not travel to Ethiopia. The question of providing a greater number of bishops than the one abun for the Ethiopian see is reported to have been broached as early as the twelfth century, when Emperor Haile of the Zagwe dynasty asked for ten bishops to assist Abuna Mika’el. Patriarch GABRIEL II (1131-1165) considered the request to be justified, but the ruler of Egypt is reported to have prevented the appointment of additional bishops, in order to keep the church of Ethiopia under the church of Egypt and consequently under the ruler of Egypt. Whatever the truth of this report, it was not until the latter part of the nineteenth century, after the death of Atnatewos, the 108th archbishop of Ethiopia, that Emperor Yohannes asked the patriarch of Alexandria, CYRIL V, to appoint three Coptic bishops to assist the new abun. In 1881 the synod of the Coptic church decreed that an archbishop and three bishops would be appointed for Ethiopia. One of these bishops was Matewos who was appointed bishop of Shewa province. When Emperor Menelik II acceded to the throne as King of Kings, he requested the patriarch to appoint Matewos as the abun of Ethiopia. Abuna Matewos died in 1926. Ras Tafari Makonnen (then regent of Ethiopia, later Emperor Haile Selassie I) asked Patriarch Cyril V to choose a new archbishop and to appoint several Ethiopian bishops to assist him in his spiritual mission. But the death of ...