Santo Stefano degli Abissini

Santo Stefano degli Abissini, Rome

In Vatican City, right behind St. Peter's, is a small church. The current facade dates to around 1700, but the Romanesque stonework around the door hints that this is a much older building. The first church here was built around 450 by Pope Leo I, and it evolved over the years into the modern structure. This is Santo Stefano degli Abissini, St. Stephen of the Ethiopians.

The existence of this church in such a prominent location, and its survival when most of the Vatican was rebuilt in the 1500s, hints at a mostly forgotten bit of history: the Papacy's determination to make allies of Christian Ethiopians, and their welcoming of a small community of Ethiopian monks within the walls of their city.

The sixteenth-century papacy was besieged on several fronts: the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, the Protestant revolt, growing nationalism in France, and the huge power of the Hapsburgs' globe-spanning empire; Spanish determination to dominate Rome led to their troops sacking the Eternal City in 1527. One of the ways the Popes sought to reassert their power was through scholarship; another was by seeking allies across the globe. The ancient Christian kingdoms of Ethiopia were perfect partners for these initiatives. They might, at least in theory, outflank the Ottomans militarily, and their ancient monasteries maintained traditions of learning to which no one else in Europe had access.

The leading Ethiopian churchmen were not shunted aside but welcomed into the church's inmost councils:

After the death of Pope Paul III on 10 November 1549, the Sacred College of Cardinals of the Catholic Church entered an unprecedented two-month conclave. As the faithful waited, the secluded cardinals produced sixty inconclusive ballots. Their protracted deliberations reflected the divisions within the College, which encompassed disagreements over the response to the Protestant Reformation as well as rivalries between supporters of the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of France. After five fruitless weeks, one participant reported in his diary that on 7 January, an agitated African emerged at the balcony of the Sistine Chapel and looked down upon the assembly, exclaiming, “Very Reverend Lords, the conclavists have shut the doors, and thus now you must either starve or arrive at a decision about choosing a pope!” For some of the gathered princes of the Church, the outburst was surely a shock. But for the Roman Curia, the interlocutor was a familiar figure: it was abba Täsfa Ṣeyon (1510–1553), the Ethiopian cleric also known as Pietro Abissino or Indiano. No interloper, he was a conclave sacrist, client of the deceased pope, and adviser to the Tridentine Catholic elite, and his proximity to Paul III was such that he attended the latter's funeral wearing the ceremonial black cloth reserved for the friends of the pontiff.

Church door, said to be unchanged since the 1200s.

Täsfa Ṣeyon was a fascinating character, and we know an amazing amount about him. From a courtly family, he went into exile around 1530 after getting caught up in one of Ethiopia's many wars, journeying first to Jerusalem and then to Rome. There he joined the small diaspora of Ethiopians centered on St. Stephen's and soon became their leading spirit. He was a remarkable linguist, working in Latin, Greek, Arabic, and multiple Ethiopian tongues; among his accomplishments was preparing the first New Testament in Ge'ez. He also translated Ethiopian texts into Latin, helping lay the foundations of serious European scholarship about Ethiopia. Among his friends was Leo Africanus, a Catholic convert born in Muslim Spain who wrote a famous Description of Africa (1526).

The connection between Rome and Ethiopia also had impacts in Ethiopia:

Ethiopian emperors were keen to acquire European were keen to acquire European goods, craftsmen and artists. And this exchange bore fruit: Portuguese musketmen fought alongside Ethipian armies and Ethiopian embassies graced European courts; Ethiopian monks attended the Council of Florence in 1441, and masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance made their way to the highlands of East Africa – one of the more impressive boasts in the autobiography of the sixteenth-century Ethiopian aristocrat Seme'on is of owning an icon pained by the Venetian painter Nicolo Brancaleon. (TLS 14 Feb. 2025)

I love these global connections, the people who moved huge distances and found ways to live in foreign lands, the friendships that grew up between people from very different lands.