African Roots PDF

# AFRICAN ROOTS - Southern kingdoms were Monophysite - Middle kingdom of Makouria was Chalcedonian - By the next century the kingdoms of Nobatia and Makouria were united under one king - Church was Monophysite, with indications of a Melkite episcopal see - Much of our knowledge about Christian...

# AFRICAN ROOTS - Southern kingdoms were Monophysite - Middle kingdom of Makouria was Chalcedonian - By the next century the kingdoms of Nobatia and Makouria were united under one king - Church was Monophysite, with indications of a Melkite episcopal see - Much of our knowledge about Christian Nubia has only recently been acquired - Unlike Egypt, which was excavated and studied in the course of the 19th century, most of the Nubian treasures and ruins remained covered over by sand until the middle of this century - Only in the last half-century and especially in the last 20 years (stimulated in particular by the construction of the Aswan Dam) has the serious study of Christian Nubia been made - Only in the last several decades has it become clear that a black African nation, largely cut off from the rest of the Christian world, built their churches with murals depicting the Virgin and the saints (usually with white skins) and their kings, queens, bishops, and nobles (with dark skins), clad in rich vestments and royal insignia in the stylized and hieratic Byzantine manner - Nubians left their leather manuscripts and documents, both liturgical and legal, written in several forms of Nubian script, some of which still remain undeciphered - The Byzantine influence was unmistakable in this country in the heart of Africa: - Art bore the mark of Constantinople - Byzantine titles of the imperial government were reduplicated in the royal administration of Nubia - The royal governor of the area known as Nobatia was called an eparch - The court had an official called the domestikos, and another known as the protodomestikos - Evidence suggests that the upper classes of Nubia used the Greek language as well as the Coptic of Egypt and their own Nubian tongue - The church likely used Greek, at least in certain periods - It's unclear how long the Nubian church remained under the jurisdiction of Constantinople - It was under the influence and likely the jurisdiction of Alexandria in Egypt by the 8th century - In 641, the Arab conquest of Egypt was complete and the church of Alexandria was under the control of the Islamic governor of Egypt - Nubia, as a Christian kingdom, was in many respects an independent entity, cut off from the great Christian centers - This Christian nation survived with its liturgy, which may very well have long been the liturgy of Constantinople rather than that of the Copts of Alexandria; with its monasteries, some of which were very large and extensive; with its cathedrals (at one point, it seems Nubia had 13 episcopal sees); and with its military forces and fortifications, which stood as a barrier against Islam - A great deal remains to be discovered about this unique African church - there are still sites to be excavated and many manuscripts to be deciphered and studied - One thing is certain, however, recent evidence makes it clear that the Nubian church remained as an outpost of Christianity much later into the Middle Ages than was hitherto believed - In 1964, a corpse was discovered in the rubble of a crypt at the church at Q'asr Ibrim (or Kasr Ibrim), a fortified city in the northern part of Nubia. The body had seemingly been buried in haste. Attached to the thighs of the skeleton were two scrolls, one written in the Coptic dialect of the delta region of Egypt and the other in Arabic. They were ordination documents attached to the dead body of a bishop attesting to his episcopal ordination; they gave his name - Timotheos. - The documents also attested that the ordination took place in the presence of other Nubian bishops in the city of Fustat (now called Old Cairo) by the patriarch of Alexandria, Gabriel IV, whose episcopacy lasted from 1372 to 1380. - The remains of Timotheos, bishop of Faras and Ibrim, are a mute testimony to the survival of a Christian church almost to the end of the Middle Ages, a church that existed on the frontiers of Christianity for almost eight hundred years. - It is the testimony of an African Christianity and an African Christian culture that is, despite its Monophysite orientation, part of the Catholic tradition in the same way that all of Eastern Christianity is. - We do not know exactly when Christianity died out completely. - There were rumors of Christian villages surviving in remote areas as late as the middle of the 18th century. - The story of one of the world's oldest civilizations is also one of the forgotten dramas of church history # BLACK CATHOLICS IN THE UNITED STATES - Nubia was not the most ancient Christian community in black Africa - Ethiopia was converted to Christianity some two centuries before the kingdoms of Nubia - A mountainous kingdom in the horn of Africa, across the Red Sea from the more ancient kingdoms of southern Arabia, this earlier civilization was apparently established by Semites from the south of Arabia. - A great civilization of indigenous black peoples came into existence in the first century A.D.