Review of MIKAEL MUEHLBAUER, Bastions of the Cross: Medieval Rock-Cut Cruciform Churches of Tigray, Ethiopia

Book review

Churches Built in the Caves of Lasta (Wällo Province, Ethiopia): A Chronology

The five churches of Yǝmrǝḥannä Krǝstos, Ǝmäkina Mädḫane ʿAläm, Ǝmäkina Lǝdätä Maryam, Walye Iyäsus and Žämmädu Maryam are all built in caves in the massif of Abunä Yosef, situated in the Lasta region of Wollo. Changes in their architectural forms suggest that they were constructed over a period of several hundred years in the order listed and as such represent a significant chronological model against which many of Ethiopia’s rock-hewn churches may be compared. Until the publication of this paper, it has been universally accepted that the church of Yǝmrǝḥannä Krǝstos was built in the second half of the 12th century under the sponsorship of an eponymous king. Aspects of the church’s architecture, namely the absence of a raised space reserved for the priesthood before the triumphal arch (the bema), of any sign of a chancel barrier around it, of western service rooms, of a vestibule and narthex, and of the presence of a reading platform (representative of the Coptic ambo), of a full-width open western bay (allowing for a ‘return aisle’), and of arches carrying the aisle ceilings, all point to a date of construction around the mid-13th century. In fact, the closest parallels to Yǝmrǝḥannä Krǝstos may be found in Lalibäla’s second group of monolithic churches, Amanuʾel and Libanos. Closely associated also is the church of Gännätä Maryam. A painting of the Maiestas Domini in the south-east side room (pastophorion) of the latter suggests that the room served as an extension of the sanctuary. By the end of the 13th century, as witnessed by Ǝmäkina Mädḫane ʿAläm and the other churches built in caves, the full-width sanctuary becomes a characteristic which endures throughout 14th- and 15th -century Ethiopian church architecture. Yǝmrǝḥannä Krǝstos and Gännätä Maryam stand on the cusp of a major liturgical change which coincides with the transfer of royal power from the Zagwe dynasty to their Solomonic successors, who sought legitimacy by following Coptic practices

Using statistical smoothing to date medieval manuscripts

We discuss the use of multivariate kernel smoothing methods to date manuscripts dating from the 11th to the 15th centuries, in the English county of Essex. The dataset consists of some 3300 dated and 5000 undated manuscripts, and the former are used as a training sample for imputing dates for the latter. It is assumed that two manuscripts that are ``close'', in a sense that may be defined by a vector of measures of distance for documents, will have close dates. Using this approach, statistical ideas are used to assess ``similarity'', by smoothing among distance measures, and thus to estimate dates for the 5000 undated manuscripts by reference to the dated ones.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/193940307000000248 the IMS Collections (http://www.imstat.org/publications/imscollections.htm) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Pastophoria and Altars: Interaction in Ethiopian Liturgy and Church Architecture

FOR THE PHOTOGRAPHS BELONGING TO THE ARTICLE SEE SUPPLEMENTARY FILES > There are three parts to the interior space of ancient Ethiopian churches: a sanctuary (Mäqdäs) which is expanded into the “Holy Place” (Qǝddǝst) and the place of the assembly (Qǝne maḥlet). Four rooms stand at the corners of a cross-in-square interior: two service rooms on either side of a narthex-like entrance-room, westwards and, more important for the present discussion, two eastern service rooms which flank the sanctuary. These are called the pastophoria. After early input from Syria-Palestine, the Ethiopian basilicas took on an Aksumite character. Their development continued in a loose relationship with changes on the Egyptian scene, notably with a double phenomenon: the evolution of the rite and place of preparation of the bread and wine for Mass (the prothesis), and the demand for more altars at a time when churches could not be multiplied in Egypt. A study of architectural changes in the churches, alongside a comparison of liturgical practices and clues found in iconography and Coptic and Syriac literature, can bear witness to how the liturgy of the Ethiopian Church developed. Such investigation is all the more important because the absence of written documentation until the 13th century has left the church buildings as almost the only evidence available for study. The present study concentrates on the evolution and eventual disappearance of the pastophoria. The nature and location of the altars provides further evidence for dating. It should be noted that Ethiopia does not entirely abide by the Coptic models, essentially because what provoked change in Egypt did not exist in Ethiopia. Many questions still remain to be answered, including: When and where did the large monolithic altar of the permanent Coptic altar type first appear? Why are the West-Syriac and Ethiopian Churches today the only ones to celebrate Mass in a synchronized manner? We hope to address these and other questions at a later date