Wendy Laura Belcher and Michael Kleiner (Translators and Editors) the Life and Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros Written by Galawdewos
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
book reviews 399 Wendy Laura Belcher and Michael Kleiner (translators and editors) The Life and Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros written by Galawdewos. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015, 544 pp., Hardbound. usd 39.95, isbn 9780691164212 This is an important translation and edition of a Christian text that has been revered by members of the ancient Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church since the seventeenth century – the gädl (sacred life story and/or “struggle”) of a canonized Ethiopian nun, Walatta Petros (1592–1642). Methodologically rig- orous, literary critic Belcher and historian Kleiner blend respective skills beau- tifully in their commentary to produce a volume that is meticulous in both its textual and contextual research, as attested by thousands of footnotes. The re- sult of their joint effort is a work that makes path-breaking contributions to cur- rent understandings of church history, the history of colonialism, the history of women in the church, the history of African “orality,” and monastic sexuality. Walatta Petros (wp) achieved sainthood within the Tewahedo Church be- cause of her unbending defense of it against incursions by those of a foreign faith. For approximately a century (1557 to 1663), Portuguese Jesuits strenu- ously attempted to win the Habäşa people of the Ethiopian highland kingdom of Abyssinia to Catholicism. Christian since the fourth century, the Habäşa rejected the Jesuit priests as practitioners of a “filthy,” debased religion; the priests spit in church, held weekly mass on Sunday, and ate pork and rabbits. The Habäşa shunned rabbit meat and pork, worshiped Saturdays as well as Sundays, and were disgusted by the unhygienic, irreverent habits of the priests regarding the disposal of their sputum. Theologically, there was contention as well. Catholics believed in the dual nature of Christ – divine and human – while the Tewahedo Church taught the unified, melded nature of Christ wherein divinity and humanity were one. The proselytizing efforts of the Jesuits achieved limited success at intervals and only among a thin stratum of society – the nobility. For a time during the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth centuries, Habäşa kings and their counselors converted to Catholicism and tried to impose the new faith on the Tewahedo clergy and laity who overwhelmingly clung to their traditional beliefs. Ultimately victorious in its fight with the Catholic threat, Ethiopian Christianity remained outside the influence of its European counterparts until the twentieth century. Walatta Petros simultaneously became the object of malignment by the Portuguese because she was a resistant noblewoman married to a converted royal official, as seen in extant Jesuit accounts of her opposition, and exaltation by her people, as seen in the gädl itself. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/18748945-03003018 400 book reviews Walatta Petros’s defiance of Catholic catechism led her to leave her marriage to become a Tewahedo nun, to be pursued by the king’s army, and to suffer exile – all the while gathering a community of followers at a monastery “in the wilderness” where she settled away from the king’s court. In 1672–1673, relatively close in time after wp’s death, a young monk named Galawdedos from her monastery penned her story. The gädl he recorded drew on anecdotes that circulated about her life and the miracles she performed. The account was shaped as well from a chronology probably suggested by her close companion, devotée, and fellow nun of twenty-five years – Eheta Kristos. What is the larger historical significance of this work? Certainly, the English translation makes this relatively obscure hagiobiography (Belcher’s term) ac- cessible to a wider group of scholars than does the original, written in the Gaʾez language. The reader is enlightened concerning the gädl as a literary genre – its structure and parts; one finds helpful instruction about how to read Tewahado art and iconography. The editors stress that the narrative provides a striking illustration of the failure of European colonial aggression during a period defined by the converse in world history. Belcher and Kleiner underscore that Petros’s gädl along with the gädlat (plural of gädl) of other Ethiopian saints calls for revision of the notion of precolonial Africa – and I would specify black Africa – as a non-literate continent where important events were preserved only by oral tradition. Belcher persuasively accentuates the critical, leading role of women as de- fenders of Tewahedo custom. On this point, however, one wishes that Kleiner – an expert in Ethiopian history – had inserted general information on pertinent gender dynamics within Habäşa society. How common was the break-up of marriages? Did Habäşa laws stigmatize or punish women economically more harshly than men following the demise of a marriage? What were literacy rates among Habäşa women? Weighing rank and gender, how much was Walatta Petros’s defiance facilitated by the status and independent resources she could deploy as a person of noble birth compared to the humble folk of her sex? The volume is virtually silent on these matters. For its early twenty-first century audience, a major claim Belcher and Kleiner draw from their translation is that Walatto Petros had same-sex attraction toward Eheta Kristos. Since the researchers do not dispute wp’s celibacy, they leave it up to the reader to decide whether such a contention enhances or diminishes the valiance of the saint’s struggle to achieve a spiritually exemplary life of asceticism. The editors highlight the atypicality of the Petros narrative in containing numerous instances of the saint’s roughness. Walatta Petros is pious, but not demure. She argues with Christ and sometimes prays for the death of less obe- Social Sciences and Missions 30 (2017) 389–416.