I’ve now trudged all the way through the remainder of the Life of Abba Garima, taking each paragraph and getting Gemini AI to translate it into English. Why Gemini? Well it was there on my list of AI sites, and I used it at random. For the immense chapter 7, I broke this down into smaller paragraphs, and this worked.
I tend to believe that what I am getting out of Gemini is indeed what the Ethiopic text says, more or less, although I have no way to be certain. At one point the name of a monarch came up, and I asked for a transcription into Roman letters of the passage. The result verified the presence of the proper name. That’s encouraging.
Gemini was often reluctant to translate the text, claiming “I’m just a poor LLM, I only know a subset of languages.” I responded, “Try again” and invariably it then decided that it did know Ge`ez after all. What this means, stripped of the fake “AI” stuff, is that the search simply failed first time, and worked the second time.
This seems to be what AI is. It’s just a search engine. Nothing more. The talky bit on the front is just a chat engine, such as banks use on websites to demoralise customers who need help and make them give up. The LLM is a big flat file containing the database that it is searching. That database is composed of a vast amount of data, including a large quantity of pirated books. The whole “AI” stuff is just nonsense, to camouflage that it’s engaged in massive copyright violation. The search brings back stuff from pirated grammars etc, and assembles them into an English narrative. As with every search engine, sometimes it guesses wrong, or gets unreliable data. But “AI” has to choose something in order to pretend to be human. So you get bogus stuff sometimes. It would be interesting to know how well AI works in other languages, like French, German, etc, where there may be much less pirated data in the database.
Back to Abba Garima. I realise that Rossini appended notes to his edition, explaining various points in the text. The philological notes are of no use to me. But I have now decided to OCR his Italian and see what else he says about the text. I think it may be of interest. We’ll see.
I now have a corrected electronic text of the homily of Yohanan, bishop of Axum, in honour of St Garima. I’ve numbered the paragraphs as an aid to myself, since I cannot even read the Ethiopian alphabet. It probably needs work. But here it is:
Today I started plugging paragraphs into DeepSeek. I also tried asking it to interleave the sentences, Ethiopic, then English. This did work, although curiously DeepSeek had trouble with the Ethiopic alphabet.
The first six chapters went fairly well. Here they are:
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one God. I have placed my trust in Him and believed in Him forever and ever. Amen.
1. The Homily delivered by Saint John, Bishop and Archbishop of Aksum, concerning the greatness and glory of Saint Isaac. And he said: Listen and understand, O my beloved brothers, what I will tell you. I saw a woman being mocked by a crowd, and as they were laughing at her and at our Lady Mary, they were saying concerning her Son, Christ: “He was not born of a woman; His birth is impossible.” These people did not believe in Christ. And as I stood there, I grew angry and stomped my foot upon the ground where that woman was standing while she spoke. And behold, at that very moment, the King of Heaven and Earth came forth. And when she spoke thus, the Holy Spirit descended upon me.
2. I tell you, I saw a man and a woman who came to me with wealth that my Lord had given me for the nourishment of your souls, the greatness and struggle of this righteous man. There was a man whose name was Mesfiyanos, king of Rome, and his wife’s name was Kefngya. For she was barren and childless, having nothing. And the two of them lived grieving for twelve years. These were righteous people who gave alms to the poor and needy and to churches. One day she went to offer sacrifice and entered the church where there were images of Peter and Paul and our Lady Mary. She stood between the three images and prayed before Mary, saying: “Give me a son who will glorify you and glorify your Son, and if he does not glorify your Son, let my womb be cursed.” And that image responded as if saying “Oh!” She offered her sacrifice and returned home. From that time she conceived and bore a son and gave thanks to God. They named him Isaac; Isaac, the joy of his mother, the splendor of his father. When he was forty days old, they took him to the church and baptized him according to Christian tradition. All the people gathered in the church of Peter and Paul. The chief bishop stood before the Ark of the Covenant and blessed him, saying: “May the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who blessed our holy forefathers bless you.” When the chief bishop blessed the child, a great light shone upon him, bright as the sun, moon, and stars. All who saw this marveled and glorified God, then offered sacrifices in their churches. The queen returned home with her child, and they celebrated a feast with great joy. When he turned twelve years old, they brought him to a teacher who instructed him in the Law, the Prophets, the Apostolic books, and their commentaries. They ordained him as a deacon. He further learned church canons, admonitions, plants, and animals. His parents consulted one another, saying: “Let us arrange a marriage for our son while we still live, that we may rejoice in his offspring.” As they were making these plans, an angel of God appeared to Mesfiyanos in a dream saying: “Many souls perish—will you not save them? A great church shall be built through him.” The king awoke and went to his wife, saying: “Last night an angel of God came to me and told me that through him miracles and wonders shall be performed.” The angel said to the queen: “I have come to command you to build and establish a church, that you may rejoice in the Kingdom of Heaven.”
3. When his father died, the nobles and dignitaries of Rome gathered and mourned for Isaac as he wept bitter tears. They enthroned him in the royal seat, and he reigned for seven years. During his days there was joy and peace. Afterwards, Saint Pantaleon came to him and said: “O my beloved Isaac, your earthly kingdom is temporary, but the kingdom of heaven is everlasting. The earthly kingdom will perish and pass away, but the heavenly kingdom will not pass away. Have you not heard what our Lord said in the Gospel: ‘Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away’? Or what Paul said about this world: ‘It is passing away, and those who weep should live as though they were not weeping, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions, and those who use the world as though they were not using it, for the form of this world is passing away’? My son Isaac, do not neglect the love of God.”
When the message arrived, Isaac saw it and wept bitterly. He rose at night and prayed, saying: “O my Lord Jesus Christ, I beg and implore You to hear my prayer and grant the request of Your servant Isaac. Show me the straight path that I should walk.” He rose at night from his chamber and went to a secret place outside the palace, departing by night. The angel Gabriel appeared to him, prepared a chariot and canopy for him with shining wings, and brought him from Rome to Aksum in ninety days, traveling by night on the back of an eagle, arriving at the third hour.
4. When the messengers of Father Pantaleon arrived after ten months and four days, they told the man of God, who marveled and trembled, saying: “O my son Isaac, have you not heard what David the prophet said: ‘Your works and my soul will be satisfied when I awake with Your likeness’? What I have done secretly, do not hide from me under the earth. What I have seen with your eyes, write it all in your book. Listen, my son, to the greatness of God who has called us from all things, just as He called you under the wing of the eagle.” As they spoke of God’s greatness, they remained until daybreak.
5. Saint Isaac said to Father Pantaleon: “Father, clothe me in the monastic garb.” Father Pantaleon replied: “Do you know, my son, what the monastic garb means?” Saint Isaac answered: “Yes, I know, father. Have you not heard what our Lord said in the Gospel: ‘What is exalted among men is an abomination before God’? As Paul said: ‘What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, or sword? Neither death nor life, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.’ I desire to be bound to Christ and to be bound tightly.”
When Father Pantaleon heard these words from Saint Isaac’s mouth, he prostrated himself and blessed God, saying to Isaac: “May God strengthen you in keeping His commandments.” Then he took the monastic garb and clothed him, blessing him with these words: “May our Lord Jesus Christ, who blessed Anthony and placed upon his head the crown of monasticism, sanctify your garb. May God who blessed Father Macarius and Father Synoda bless your garb. May He who gave Elijah’s mantle to Elisha when he ascended to heaven and brought down the cloak for him—and with that cloak Elisha struck the waters and crossed over, raised the dead, and cleansed lepers—likewise sanctify your garb. May God who sanctified the priesthood of Melchizedek sanctify your priesthood.” They remained together for one year.
6. When the other saints heard that Saint Isaac had renounced the kingdom and embraced monastic life, they came to him. Among them were Abba Likanos from Qusṭinṭinya (Constantinople), Abba Yima’ata from Qosya, Abba Ṣəḥma from Antioch, Abba Guba from Cilicia, Abba Afṣe from Isya, Abba Maṭa‘ from Rome, and Abba ‘Oṣe from Caesarea. When the saints gathered, they met with Abba Pantaleon and Saint Isaac, and they were united in spiritual love. They lived together in one house, devoted to prayer. Among them, there was no one who sought personal gain, nor anyone who desired material possessions or the pleasures of the world. They remained for a period of one year.
The first 5 chapters are from DeepSeek. I then asked it to do chapter 6, and the monstrously long chapter 7. The results were weird, and then DeepSeek crashed. I then tried ChatGPT on chapter 6, which is what you have above. The DeepSeek version was about the same.
The ChatGPT version of chapter 7 was quite different in every way from that produced by DeepSeek. Here’s DeepSeek, the opening bits:
7. While they lived in this way, a governor of Aksum came to them and said: “There is a great beast, a king of the land of Ethiopia, to whom all the nobles bow down and offer gifts. They bring him a beautiful maiden of good appearance, and they perform sacrifices and offerings. When she is brought before this beast, he defiles her and then devours her. This beast has reigned in this manner for fifteen years.”
This beast was 170 cubits long and 4 cubits wide, with one cubit for its tail. Its eyes were like fiery coals, and the pupils of its eyes were like black pots. Its entire body was like a serpent and a dragon. When it ate, it would consume 17 oxen, and they would bring before it 10 sheep, 10 goats, 1000 chickens, 100 lambs, and countless birds. Upon its head were horns measuring three cubits. When it moved, its voice could be heard from a distance of eighty days’ journey.
When the brothers heard this, they marveled and were astonished. They trembled and said to the governor: “Do you truly speak the truth?” He replied: “Yes, truly. If you do not believe me, let one of you come and see.” Father Pantaleon said to Saint Isaac: “My son, what shall we do?” Saint Isaac replied: “Let my brother Oz go and observe this beast. If it is as he says, then you too must rise and pray.” …
Here’s ChatGPT:
7. And when they came and reached him, a certain nobleman from Aksum spoke to them and said: “Hail, great king, the ruler of the nation of Ethiopia!” And they all bowed before him, the nobles, and presented to him the honorable and righteous virgin of the Lord. And they performed hymns and praises, and she came before him, the king, and prostrated herself. And she continued to remain pure. And the king was astonished.
And they stayed there for fifteen years. And the king stood in honor of her for one hundred and eighty days. And he prepared four feasts in her honor. And one of these feasts was the greatest. And his eyes shone like flames of fire, and his pupils were as bright as polished metal. His appearance was as dazzling as the sun and lightning. And when he spoke, seventeen scribes recorded his words. And they made a proclamation across the land.
There were ten thousand warriors, and one hundred thousand men armed with shields and spears. And they gathered before him in great numbers. And his voice was heard from afar, resounding like thunder. And the land trembled at his voice. And his presence was mighty, and all the nobles fell before him.
The DeepSeek text is at least plausible. The ChatGPT is not.
What I will try doing is getting each to translate it, sentence by sentence, interleaved with the Ethiopic. I’ll see what that does.
I’m working away on this Ethiopian homily of John, bishop of Axum, on St. Garima. It was printed in 1898 by C. Conti Rossini,[1] but without translation.
Well, I don’t know any Ethiopian at all, and I don’t even know the alphabet. There are 31 consonants, each of which has seven variants, I gather.
But I knew that it was possible to get Google to turn images into electronic text, and a couple of experiments with ChatGPT and DeepSeek quickly showed that the resulting output file could be understood by AI and produce English text.
So I need to get a decent electronic text.
My first step was to take the PDF, extract the pages with the Ethiopian text on them, and pull them into Finereader. Finereader does NOT support Amharic, but it has useful image editing tools. I trimmed the 24 pages down to the bare text – no footnotes, no headings, and exported them as images to a directory.
I then bundled these images up into a PDF using my incredibly elderly Adobe Acrobat Pro 9.0. I then went into Google Drive and uploaded the PDF. Then I right-clicked on it in Google Drive, and opened it in Google Docs. This caused Google to OCR it, thereby creating an electronic text. I then downloaded this in Word format.
I’ve checked the results into a local Git repository – so that I can always go back if I screw up the file.
And now, page by page, I am going through what Google has given me, removing obvious crud and irrelevant line breaks. It seems to insert a small amount of garbage between pages.
Wish me luck!
There are other free Amharic OCR websites online, and these seem to do a reasonable job too. But I’ve stuck so far with the Google Docs output.
Incidentally DeepSeek offered the opinion that the text is not in Amharic, as I had expected, but in Ge`ez, Classical Ethiopian. Luckily it doesn’t care.
[1]C. Conti Rossini, “L’omilia di Yohannes vescovo di Aksum in onore di Garima,” Actes du Congrès International des Orientalistes, Section Sémitique (Paris, 1898).Online via here.↩
Back in August 2023, I found that it was possible to scan in some of an Ethiopian text, part of the Life of Saint Garima. Unfortunately the results from machine translation were disappointing. ChatGPT was no better.
This evening I was writing my last post, and remembered these efforts. So I pasted those chunks of text into ChatGPT. Here’s the first:
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one God above all, I have renounced everything and believed in Him until the end of the world. Amen.
The sermon delivered by Saint John, the Bishop of Aksum, concerning the greatness and honor of Saint Isaac:
He said, “Listen and understand, my beloved ones, what I will tell you. I saw a woman who was suffering greatly, trembling and in distress. And she called upon Our Lady Mary, saying: ‘For the sake of the Son, Christ, this woman is not yet born.’ They said to her, ‘Whoever does not believe in Christ and remains doubtful, they shall be humbled and brought low under her feet.’
Then, at that moment, the King of Heaven and Earth came forth. And she said, ‘The one who is greater than Moses shall come.’
Plausible. Here’s the second chunk:
And it happened on one night that a book was opened, read, and written down. And he arose for prayer in the church. And the angels wrote for him the Gospel at the fourth hour and interpreted it for him. And the angels of God descended and stood before him, and our Lord Christ comforted him. And his message was heard throughout all the land. His prayer and blessing remained with us.
In my last post I found that it was possible to turn a PDF full of images of Amharic text into recognised electronic text using Google Drive, and then get some translation of the results into English using Google Translate.
There were some extremely interesting comments made on the post, which I have been reading. I have also prepared a PDF of the whole text of the Life of Garima by Yohannes, and run that through the Google Drive process.
Where we started was in trying to read a passage of this text, in which – supposedly – God stopped the sun so that St Garima could copy the bible in one day. The summary of the work given by Rossini (instead of a proper translation, drat him), indicates that this was on lines 356-60 of his text, which turns out to be the last line of p.161 and the first three of p.162. Here they are:
The output from the OCR is good, but you still have to compare the characters carefully. Errors can often be picked up just by dumping the raw scan output into Google Translate, which shows things like numerals.
Here we have a character that is plainly wrong, and coming out as a numeral “4”. It looks like an “o” with a hat and two dots under. The two dots under are legs in another copy of Rossini.
I’m guessing that it’s a “ge” character, from looking at the Wikipedia article, but I can’t be sure. The script isn’t an alphabet, but a syllabary, based on syllables. Each character is a consonant followed by a vowel, which makes for a lot more characters. There’s a table of the characters on the Wikipedia article, consonants down the left, vowels across the top. I’ve not really looked at this.
The Google translate output is also interesting because of the choice of “detected language” – Tigrayan, rather than Amharic. If you force it to Amharic, you get a lot less meaning.
One awkward part of using Google Drive to do the OCR is that it doesn’t preserve the line breaks. That makes comparing the lines more awkward. So you have to manually do this:
The Wikipedia article mentioned earlier gave me a list of punctuation marks. There are two sorts of punctuation visible in here. The colon mark is actually word division, which means that some words above go over two lines. I’ve chosen not to split words above. The double colon mark “::” is the full stop. Interestingly Google Translate gives different results if you remove the spaces!
Going through the electronic text, removing spaces, I notice that sometimes the word-separator isn’t detected by the OCR. So I added that in. Sometimes it put a Roman colon instead, so I replaced that. Finally I split on sentence:
But this still is not good enough to do much with. If we didn’t have an idea what the text said, this would not tell us.
All this fiddling about would certainly get to into contact with the language, and start you on a journey to learning it. But it’s not good enough a translation for other purposes, although intriguing.
One suggestion that was made in the comments to the last article was that ChatGPT gave better results. The output quoted was indeed produced, and was very smooth and seemed to be a series of liturgical prayers. But… I don’t think that this is actually the content. These AI tools are really only an improved version of the text prediction tools you get on messaging on a mobile phone. So it was pumping out garbage.
Anyway I tried it on this passage, and it crashed GPT very effectively! At the moment I can’t get any reply of any sort, not even to “hello”.
I don’t think that I will do more here. Clearly the technology is almost, but not quite good enough to be useful.
In my last post I mentioned how the Life of St Garima in Ethiopian was printed by Rossini, but without a translation. In fact it has never been translated into any modern language, to my knowledge. I don’t know any Ethiopian, and I doubt that I ever will.
But we live in an age of wonders, when it comes to unfamiliar languages.
So… is it possible to work with Ethiopian language editions, even if you know no Ethiopian? What about Google Translate? Ethiopian is in this heavy unfamiliar script. Is there OCR for this? If you can scan Rossini’s edition, can you pop it into Google Translate and get the English?
There are two sorts of Ethiopian out there, I know. There is Ge`ez, or classical Ethiopian; and there is Amharic, the modern dialect. Rossini printed his text from a 19th century manuscript. So it seems likely that this is in Amharic.
A quick Google confirmed; Google Translate knows Amharic! A bit of googling found me an Amharic news website online, here. I’m using Chrome, so all I had to do was right-click anywhere and select “Translate to English” and the whole website was rendered into some sort of English. And… it worked!! Yay me! It’s obviously not 100%, but it’s way better than 0%!
So what about OCR? I was sad to see that Abbyy Finereader apparently doesn’t support Amharic. That’s a blow. It was developed originally to handle Cyrillic, so it certainly has the capability. But it’s not offered. Drat.
A bit of googling brought me to a dubious-looking website here, claiming to offer a selection of tools which could do Amharic OCR. The prose felt a bit machine-generated, so I worried that it was bunk, or worse, a malicious site. But the first option was… Google Drive.
I never knew this, but seems that, if you upload a PDF containing an image of text, and then open it in Drive as a Google Docs document, it OCR’s the content.
Well, I thought, let’s give it a try. So I extracted the first page of Rossini’s edition, using Adobe Acrobat Pro 9 – no flashy latest-edition stuff going on here! Here’s a pic:
Then I uploaded it, and opened as a Google document. And … it just treated the Amharic as an image. Dang! But I noticed that it did indeed OCR the Italian at the top of the page!
This is supposed to work. So I thought maybe I should work over the image a bit. I imported the one-page PDF into Abbyy Finereader 15, and chopped off the Italian at the top, and the critical apparatus at the bottom. I then used the image editor in Finereader to “whiten the background”. This can be flaky, but this time it worked fine, and I got a pure white background. And I got this:
(I’ve just seen the marginal notes, which I need to chop off as well, so I’ll have to go round the loop again)
I exported the image as a PNG, and I used Acrobat again to create a PDF from the image. Then I uploaded the new PDF to Google Drive, and opened it as a Google Docs document. And… it worked! Sort of…
That’s… rather astonishing. No idea what all that is, but it looks sort of right. Let’s bear in mind that Rossini printed his edition in 1897. This is not a modern typeface. So this is rather good.
Next step was to paste it into Google Translate. It set it to auto-detect the language, and pasted in the first bit. And… it worked. In fact it gave a really useful transcription into Roman letters as well, which makes it a LOT easier to manipulate the text.
OK, I’m cheating slightly. The first time I uploaded, the translation ended at “Spirit”. But this is a Google Translate bug – it sometimes omits the remainder of a sentence. If you split the text with a line feed, you often get the rest. And that’s what I did. I worked out by experiment where I needed to be, and then I got the above.
I don’t quite believe the translation of the second sentence either. I suspect I need to play with this a bit to work out what each word is.
I notice all those colons between every word. It might help if I actually looked up the script online!
But I think you’ll agree that this is quite marvellous – I, who know absolutely nothing about the language, am getting something useful out!
Here’s an interesting one, which I came across today. There is an early set of gospels in Ethiopia, at the Abuna Garima monastery in Ethiopia’s Tigrai Highlands. An article in the Independent 6 July 2010 by Jerome Taylor tells us:
The monks have their own legend about how the gospels came into their possession. They believe they were written by Abba Garima, a Byzantine royal who arrived in what was then the kingdom of Axum in 494 and went on to found the monastery. According to the monks, Abba Garima finished his exquisite work in a single day because God stopped the sun from setting while he worked.
This claim is repeated in many places, often based on Wikipedia’s wording, which references the Independent article:
According to tradition, Abba Garima wrote and illustrated the complete Gospels in a single day: God stopped the sun from setting until the Saint completed his work.
“Tradition” is a weasel word. We have no traditions, not in the modern age, handed down from father to son orally. What we have are books. So whenever we see “tradition” mentioned, we need to ask what the literary source is.
Fortunately information is not far to seek. In Judith McKenzie and Francis Watson, The Garima Gospels: Early Illuminated Gospel Books from Ethiopia, Oxford (2016), (preview here), we find the following statement, p. ix, n.25:
23 There is a tradition that while Abba Garima was copying the Gospels, God stopped the sun so that he might complete the task in a single day (Heldman 1993: 129). This incident is not included in Carlo Conti Rossini’s edition of the text, where it is reported instead that, while he began the task, angels completed the work for him in four hours (Conti Rossini 1897: 161-62). There is, however, an illustrated manuscript at the monastery showing in a single miniature Abba Garima copying the Gospel below both a full and a setting sun, under the inscription “As Abba Garima wrote the Gospel in the land of Atäret” (fig 20 here). Atäret is one of the places said to have been granted to the monastery by Gabra Masqäl (A. Bausi, “Ǝnda Abba Garima,“ EAE 2: 284:. I am grateful to Denis Nosnitsin and Nafisa Valieva for their assistance in the identification of this story.
– M. Heldman, “The Heritage of Late Antiquity,” in: R. Grierson (ed), African Zion: The Sacred Art of Ethiopia, (1993), pp. 117-32, esp. 129-30.
– C. Conti Rossini, “L’omilia di Yohannes, vescovo d’Aksum in onore di Garimâ,” in: Actes du Onzième Congrès des Orientalistes. Paris – 1897. Quatrième section. Hébreu – Phénicien – Aramée – Éthiopien – Assyrien, Paris (1898), pp. 139–177.
The Garima Gospels: Early Illuminated Gospel Books from Ethiopia, p.18, fig.20.
I was only able to access the preview, but this extraordinarily interesting book must be the source for what appears online. But let’s look deeper into the references.
The Heldman reference is as follows:
According to tradition, the monastery from which this manuscript [=Abba Garima Gospels I] takes its name was founded by Isaac, also known as Abba Garima, one of the Nine Saints who came to Ethiopia from the Roman Empire in the late fifth century. Monks of Abba Garima’s monastery reported to Donald Davies that Abba Garima himself had copied this manuscript, and that he had completed the task in a single day. God stopped the sun’s course one afternoon so that Abba Garima could finish copying his Gospels before night fell.[1]
Conversation between the author and Donald Davies, 1986.
So the story is circulating in just this form in Ethiopia currently.
The Rossini “section 4” is at Gallica here. The article turns out to be the publication of a text in Ethiopic, the Gadla Abba Garima, called by Rossini the “Homily of Yohannes, bishop of Axum, in honour of Garima.” He printed it from a manuscript in the French National Library (A = Paris BNF et. 132, 19th c.) and one in Berlin (= B, with an impenetrable shelfmark, 16th c.). The oldest MS is 15th century. “Yohannes” is of course John, and a bishop of that name did arrive in Ethiopia from Egypt around 1439.[1]
Unfortunately the homily is given without translation (!). The best the editor could do was to give a summary of what it says. Basically Abba Garima was a Byzantine prince named Isaac, who came to Ethiopia and took the name of Garima, and is one of the Nine Saints who appear in Ethiopian literature in the 14-15th century and are unknown before then.[2]
I’ve run Rossini’s summary over into English. Rossini states:
Here is a brief summary of the narration contained in the homily:
And then we get this:
After years of historic marriage, Masfyânos, king of Rome, and Sefengyà, his pious wife, have a son, Yeshâq, «whose name means “pearl”»; while the patriarch is baptizing him, a great supernatural light foretells his future glories (v. 14-36.) — At the age of twelve the child is sent to school, where he progresses rapidly: still growing up, his parents would like to give him a wife, but a celestial vision distracts them (v. 36-48).— With the death of Masfyânos, reluctant Yeshâq is placed on the throne. After seven years of peaceful reign, he secretly flees to Ethiopia, called there by a letter from the saint Pantalêwon of Somâ`t: the angel Gabriel transports him there in four days, while the messengers of Pantalêwon take ten months to return and four days. There Yeshâq received the monastic habit from Pantalêwon, and he remained with his teacher for a year (v. 48-108) — Then, having heard of his departure, Liqânos of Constantinople, Yem`atâ of Qosyât, Schmâ of Antioch, Gubâ of Cilicia, Afsê of Asia, Malâ` of Romyâ, and `Os of Caesarea also went to Ethiopia, and with great abstinence, and in great holiness, live in the same house with Pantalêwon and Yeshâq (v. 108-122). — While they are like this, a governor of Aksum announces to them how the country is dominated by a huge snake, Arwè, venerated as a God, and to which, in addition to infinite animals, a girl is given daily: assured of the fact thanks by sending of Yeshâq and `Os, who was very frightened at the sight of the monster, the nine saints with great prayers obtain from God the death of the serpent (v. 123-284). — Then Ethiopia is filled with tumults and disorders; until God, seeing the righteousness of the faith of that land, and hearing the prayers of the saints, invoking a king of David’s lineage, places Kâlêb on the throne. (v. 285-288). — After thirteen years, and many prodigies performed by them, a poor monk, Melkyânos, joins them, whose humility they despise; whereupon, to punish them, God takes away from them a mysterious face, which used to come down to illuminate their meals. Having obtained the pardon of this, the saints divided, and Yeshâq retired to Madarâ (v. 288-309). — There he performs great miracles: he frees a possessed person, heals a woman who has been suffering for thirty years from an uninterrupted flow of blood, etc., etc.
At the same time he is made head of the priests of Madarâ (v. 310-345). — One day, he sows a grain of wheat: in a short time this germinates, grows, produces a very rich harvest, which the saint distributes to the poor (v. 346-355). — Another day, having ceased writing in order to pray, the angels, who always served him, copy for him the gospel and his interpretation of it (v. 356-360). — Heals a girl invaded by an evil spirit (v. 360-442). — Visited by two monks, he feeds them, but puts away his portion, whereupon, a little later, invited, he celebrates the Eucharistic sacrifice, for which, his companions not knowing that he was still fasting, he is accused to Pantalêwon. The latter calls him to an interview, and, having met, he invites him, in order to be able to take him back in secret, to have his companions leave: «not only men, but let the trees of the wood and the stones move away from us!» exclaims Yeshâq: the trees and the stones obey, so, recognizing his innocence, Pantalêwon shouts: «Garamkani, you have amazed me!» and from this Yeshâq takes the name of Garimâ (v. 443-491). — Returning to the convent, one day Garimâ stops the sun to be able to fulfill his prayers (v. 492-496). — The donkey that used to serve him and bring him the gospel and food having died, he mourns him bitterly (v. 497-507). — After writing under a tree and having spat on a large stone, he makes a healthy spring gush forth (v. 507-511). — Having come across a village that does not observe Sunday rest, he scolds them, is badly beaten, and launches terrible curses against it (v. 512-527)» — King Gabra Masqal, hearing the saint’s wonders, visits him in Modani or Bèta Masqal, receives his blessing, has a church erected there in honour of the saint, and to this and to the convent of Garimâ he donates the land of Tâfâ, `Adwâ, Mesâh(?), Sebe`ito(?), and Maya Lehekuet (v. 528-556). — One time the saint sows a grape: immediately it germinates, and he draws the juice for the mass. Gathered around him many men, he gives rules and precepts for the community (v. 557-665). — Having descended into the heart of the mountain, he causes a wonderfully healthy spring to gush from it (v. 566-569). — When his pen falls while he is writing, it becomes a plant (v. 569-571). — Informed of all this, the king gives him the land of Atarêt and seven other cities (v. 571-575). — The saint, while going with Yem’âtâ, stops a large boulder, which Satan rolls against him to kill him, meets one last time with Pantalêwon, by whom he is comforted for the beatings given to him by the violators of Sunday rest (v. 576-592). — And finally, warned by God of his imminent end, he obtains from Him great promises for those who venerate him, bids farewell to his brothers and disappears on the 17th of the month of Sene (v. 593-640). — One of his disciples then has a vision of future painful events in the locality sanctified by Garimâ, where a wicked people will settle (v. 641-645).[3]
It is a pity that we do not have a translation of pp.161-2, because the summary does NOT give us the story as Judith McKenzie summarises it. I expect that Dr. McKenzie is correct. But note how this 15th century text has two episodes that each have part of the story, rather than just one? This suggests that the narrative we have today was assembled somewhere since this text was written. Hagiography is often revised over time.
I was unable to discover whether any of the Lives of the Nine Saints have been translated into any western language. If not, this is rather a shame. The Life of Garima is 23 pages; surely not beyond the powers of any native English speaker who knows Ethiopian? Is there anybody out there?
[1]Or so I gather from a rather marvellous article: Stuart Munro-Hay, “Saintly Shadows”, in: Walter Raunig, Steffen Wenig (edd.), Afrikas Horn, Series: Meroitica 22, Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, (2005) 137-168; p. 162 (preview here).↩
Ecco un breve compendio della narrazione, contenuta nell’ omilia :
Dopo anni di storile matrimonio, Masfyânos, re di Roma, e Sefengyà, piissima sua moglie, hanno un figlio , Yeshâq, «il cui nome significa margarita»; mentre il patriarca lo battezza, una grande luce soprannanaturale ne preannuncia le future glorie (v. 14-36.) — A dodici anni il fanciotto è mandalo a scuola, ove rapidamente progredisce: cresciuto ancora, i suoi genitori vorrebbero dargli moglie, ma una visione celeste ne li distoglie (v. 36-48).— Morto Masfyânos, Yeshâq riluttante è posto sul trono. Dopo selle anni di pacifico regno, fugge di nascosto in Etiopia, chiamatovi da una lettera del santo Pantalêwon di Somâ`t: l’angelo Gabriele ve lo trasporta in quattro giorni, mentre i messi di Pantalêwon impiegano nel ritorno dieci mesi e quattro giorni. Colà Yeshâq receve da Pantalêwon l’abito monacale, e col suo maestro rimane un anno (v. 48-108) — Allora, avuta notìzia della sua andata, passano in Etiopia anche Liqânos di Costantinopoli, Yem`atâ di Qosyât, Schmâ di Antiochia, Gubâ della Cilicia, Afsê dell’ Asia, Malâ` di Romyâ, `Os di Cesarea, e con grandi astinenze, e in grande santità vivono in una sola casa con Pantalêwon e Yeshâq (v. 108-122). — Mentre così stanno, un governatore di Aksum annuncia loro come il paese sia dominato da un immane serpente, Arwè, venerato come un Dio, e in pasto al quale, oltre a infiniti animali, si dà giornalmente una fanciulla: sinceratisi del fatto mercè l’invio di Yeshâq e di `Os, il quale ultimo assai si spaventa alla vista dei mostro, i nove santi con grandi preghiere ottengono da Dio la morie del serpente (v. 123-284). — L’Etiopia allora si empie di tumulti e di disordini; sino a che Dio, vedendo la rettitudine della fede di quella terra, ed esaudendo le preci dei santi, invocanti un re della stirpe di Davide, pone sul trono Kâlêb. (v. 285-288). — Dopo tredici anni, e compiuti da loro numerosi prodigi, un povero monaco, Melkyânos, si unisce ad essi, i quali ne vilipendono l’umiltà; onde, per punirli, Dio lor toglie una face misteriosa, che soleva scendere a illuminarne i pasti. Ottenuto di ciò il perdono, i santi dividonsi, e Yeshâq ritirasi in Madarâ (v. 288-309). — Ivi egli compie grandi miracoli: libera un ossesso, guarisce una donna, da trenta anni sofferente per ininterrotto flusso di sangue, ecc., ecc.
Intanto, è fatto capo dei sacerdoti di Madarâ (v. 310-345). — Un giorno, egli semina un acino di grano: in breve ora questo germina, cresce, produce una ricchissima messe, che tutta il santo distribuisce ai poveri (v. 346-355). — Un altro giorno, avendo cessato di scrivere per pregare, gli angeli, che sempre lo servivano, gli copiano l’evangelo e la sua interpretazione (v. 356-360). — Sana una fanciulla invasa dallo spirito maligno (v. 360-442). — Visitato da due monaci, egli dà loro da mangiare, ma ripone la sua parte, onde, poco di poi, invitato, celebra il sacrifizio eucaristico, di che, ignorandosi dai suoi compagni com’ egli si conservasse digiuno, è accusato presso Pantalêwon. Questi lo chiama a colloquio, e, incontratolo, lo invita, per poterlo riprendere in segreto, a far allontanare i suoi compagni: «non gli uomini soltanto, ma gli alberi del bosco e le pietre si scostino da noi!» esclama Yeshâq: gli alberi e le pietre obbediscono, onde, riconosciuta l’innocenza, Pantalêwon grida: «Garamkani, mi hai stupito!» e da ciò Yeshâq trae il nome di Garimâ (v. 443-491). — Tornato al convento, un dì Garimâ ferma il sole per poter compiere le sue preghiere (v. 492-496). — Essendo morto l’asino che soleva servirlo e portargli l’evangelo ed il cibo, lo piange amaramente (v. 497- 507). — Stando a scrivere sotto un albero e avendo sputato su un gran sasso, ne fa sgorgare una fonte salutare (v. 507-511). — Imbattutosi in un villaggio che non osserva il riposo domenicale, lo redarguisce, è in malo modo percosso, e contro di esso lancia terribili maledizioni (v. 512- 527)» — Il re Gabra Masqal, intesi i prodigi del santo, lo visita in Modani o Bèta Masqal, ne riceve la benedizione, fa in onore del santo colà erigere una chiesa, e a questa ed al convento di Garimâ dona la terra di Tâfâ, ‘Adwâ, Mesâh(?), Sebe`ito(?), Maya Lehekuet (v. 528-556). — Una volta il santo semina un acino d’uva: subito questo germina, ed egli ne trae il succo per la messa. Adunatisi intorno a lui molti uomini, egli dà regole e precetti per la comunità (v. 557-665). — Sceso nel cuor del monte, fa da esso zampillare una fonte mirabilmente salutare (v. 566- 569). — Cadutagli la penna mentre sta scrivendo, essa diviene una pianta (v. 569-571). — Informato di tutto ciò, il re gli dona la terra d’Atarêt ed altre sette città (v. 571-575). — Il santo, mentre va con Yem’âtâ, ferma un grande macigno, che Satana, per ucciderlo, gli rotolava contro, incontrasi un’ultima volta con Pantalêwon, dal quale e confortato per le percosse dategli dai violatori del riposo domenicale (v. 576-592). — Ed infine, avvertito da Dio della prossima sua fine, e ottenute da Lui grandi promesse per quelli che lo venereranno, saluta i suoi fratelli e scompare al 17 del mese di sanê (v. 593-640). — Un suo discepolo ha, poscia, una visione circa futuri dolorosi eventi della località santificata da Garimâ, ove si stabilirâ un popolo malvagio (v. 641-645).↩
The Arabic Christian historians are largely unknown. Starting in the 9th century, the main ones are Agapius, Eutychius, al-Makin, Bar Hebraeus, and one whom I always forget [Yahya ibn Said al-Antaki].
Al-Makin wrote in the 13th century, and contains a version of the Testimonium Flavianum of Josephus, which appears in Shlomo Pines’ much-read but much-misunderstood paper on the subject. But anyone wishing to consult the text of al-Makin, in Arabic, must find a manuscript; no printed edition exists. I did attempt to do something about this, a few years ago, but in vain.
Al-Makin, like other Arabic texts, was translated into Ethiopian. A correspondent writes to tell me about some sources for the Ethiopian version.
Firstly, an article on translation technique from Arabic to Ethiopic, “Arabisch-äthiopische Übersetzungstechnik am Beispiel der Zena Ayhud (Yosippon) und des Tarika Walda-‘Amid” (i.e. “Arabic-Ethiopian translation techniques using the example of Zena Ayhud (Yosippon) and Tarika Walda-Amid”) by Manfred Kropp, with al-Makin as one of the examples, in the ZDMG, is now online in high resolution here. In Ethiopian chronicles Al-Makin is known as Giyorgis Walda-Amid (George, son of Amid) while Tarika Walda-Amid (Chronicle of Walda-Amid) is the title given to his “Blessed Collection”.
Kropp has also published a book, Zekra Nagar – Die universalhistorische Einleitung nach Giyorgis Wala-Amid in der Chronikensammlung des Haylu aka (The preface to the Universal History of Giyorgis Walda-Amid in the Chronicle Collection of Haylu” – Haylu was an 18th c. Ethiopian prince). There is a Google Books preview here.
Modern Ethiopians speak Amharic, not Classical Ethiopic or Ge’ez. I learn that Prof. Sirgiw Gelaw from Addis Ababa University has prepared a translation of the Ge’ez version of Al-Makin into Amharic. The manuscript is 560 pages long and is still waiting publication.
A manuscript copy of the Ethiopian version of the first part of Al-Makin – he divides his work into two parts, pre-Islam and post – is actually online at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, here. The catalogue entry is here.
In Amharic, the main biblical commentary is known as the Andemta commentary. This is divided into four sections, which cover the Old Testament, the New Testament, Patristic works, and Monastic canons and texts.[1]
The Andemta commentary is an explanation in Amharic of passages in the Ethiopian biblical, patristic and liturgical books, themselves written in Geez. The commentary does discuss textual variants and emendations, showing that the authors are aware of scribal issues. The Geez OT is based on the Septuagint, rather than the Hebrew text.[2]
The commentary is little known in the West. Manuscripts are uncommon. The late Roger Cowley (d. 1988) worked in Ethiopia for 15 years, and managed to amass copies of the entire collection, which he bequeathed to the British Library. He encountered great difficulty even in identifying manuscripts.[3] However the Andemta commentary has now at least been printed for a number of books of the bible; Psalms, the 5 books of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Ezekiel, the 4 gospels, Acts, the letters of Paul, the Catholic letters, and Revelation.[4]
Cowley does refer to the commentary on Philoxenus (of Mabbug) in the Andemta commentary in his own book on Ethiopian Biblical Interpretation, but otherwise I have been unable to find anything on the subject of the patristic commentaries.
[1]British Library Endangered Archives project 336, here. “This project aims to digitise the andemta (Ge’ez – Amharic commentary) manuscripts of biblical and patristic commentaries made according to the lay bet exegetical tradition. The formerly famous exegetical school of thought known as lay bet has survived only in the much endangered codices which are kept mostly in private and in rare monastic collections in Eastern Gojjam and Southern Gondar regions, Ethiopia. The material includes 70-75 codices which cover the Ge’ez – Amharic commentary of the four sections of Ethiopian Exegesis: Old Testament, New Testament, Patristic Works and Monastic Canons & Writings.”↩
[2]K. Stoffregen-Pedersen, Traditional Ethiopian exegesis of the book of Psalms, 1995, p.5↩
[3]K. Stoffregen-Pedersen, Traditional Ethiopian exegesis of the book of Psalms, 1995, p.2↩
It has taken some time since I wrote this initial article, but I am finally in a position to say somewhat more.
The Gospel problems and solutions by Eusebius was used by the compiler of a now lost Greek catena commentary. This catena was translated into Coptic (De Lagarde published it) and the Coptic into Arabic.
The Arabic version then seems to have furnished material for a composition in Ethiopian, in Ge`ez, to be specific.
The Geez adaptation of the Coptic-Arabic gospel catena gives the name of the magi’s ancestor as Zaradas, and continues with the information tabulated below [15]: …
15. The text I have primarily used is B.L. Add. 16220, fol. 10b-11a; EMML 2088 fol. 9a-b has only minor differences.[1]
The source for this is the mess that is Roger Cowley’s Ethiopian Biblical Interpretation, where Cambridge University Press declined to do more than reproduce the typescript. The book is full of great scholarship, but, as here, subjects are raised without any introduction, on the assumption that everyone will know about this Ge`ez text. In this case Cowley is investigating the sources for a passage in the Amharic “Andemta commentary”, discussing the Magi, and doing so with great intelligence and learning, but, unfortunately, little concern for the reader.
“BL” is of course the British Library; “EMML” is the “Ethiopian Manuscript Microfilm Library (see 7.2 under W. Macomber and Getatchew Haile)”, which doesn’t take us a huge distance forward. It is a reasonable inference from Cowley’s careless remarks that these are two manuscripts of this Geez text.
The British Library is a major research library, so of course its website is useless to the researcher and its catalogues must be found elsewhere. What else do we expect, in return for our taxes? I found this information on Add. 16220:
The Manuscripts which here follow in the order of numbers, from No. 16,185 to No. 16,258 inclusive, are in the Ethiopic language, and were presented by the Church Missionary Society. They are all fully described in the “Catalogus Codicum Manuscriptorum Orientalium, qui in Museo Britannico asservantur. Pars III.” Published in 1847. Folio.
In the 160 years following, it seems, nothing more has been done. The British Library, lazily, has not even troubled to place these paper catalogues online as PDFs. Thankfully Google Books has it. But even then, the volume is not organised by shelfmark, nor is there an index. Dear me, no. Fortunately Google again rescued me, and I find the item on p.10-11, as “ms. XI.”
It is a catena on Matthew, on f.9-46, preceded by 8 leaves of paschal tables. Named as being referenced ubique (everywhere) are: John Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Severus of Antioch, Gregory Nazianzen, Basil the Great, Clement of Rome, Athanasius, Benjamin, Epiphanius, Simon Eremita, Litus, Ausonius, Justus.
Sadly there is no mention of Eusebius. But I do not trust catalogues on such things, of course.
Ms. XII is also a catena on Matthew, I notice.
I suppose it is futile to wish that this Ethiopic catena — just 37 leaves — was edited and translated?
