State and Religion in the Constitution and Politics of Ethiopia
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STATE AND RELIGION IN THE CONSTITUTION AND POLITICS OF ETHIOPIA MARTA TORCINI CORAZZA I. HISTORICAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL ROOTS OF THE ETHIOPIAN STATE 1. Origin of the Ethiopian State The constitutional history of Ethiopia has very ancient roots, and just as ancient is the importance of religion in the political and constitutional context of the Country. We have to consider that, unlike most countries around the world, Europe included, a State called “Ethiopia” exists since the VI century B.C., although with many changes in boundaries due to historical vicissitudes. In addition, the State, unlike all African countries, has remained almost untouched by colonisation, excluding the short period of the Italian occupation between 1935 and 1941. Thanks to these particular vicissitudes, relations between State and Church followed an autonomous way, free from foreign influences, creating for centuries a strong alliance for power1. Until 1931, Ethiopia had no written Constitution. During the centuries, three sacred books signed the public life of Ethiopia through their religious and administrative provisions and the histories they tell: the Fetha Nagast, a collection of laws and provisions for religious and civil life, the Kebra Nagast, which mostly influenced the constitutional process with the “Solomonic Legend”, and the most recent Serate Mengist. However, none of them was a Constitution in a modern sense, i.e. a homogeneous body of rules concerning State structure and organisation, and citizens’ fundamental rights and duties. 1 For a larger analysis of the relationships between State and Church in Ethiopia dur- ing the eleventh – sixteenth centuries see: TADDESSE TAMRAT, Church and State in Ethiopia, 1270-1527, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972. See also: CRUMMERY, D., Land and Society in the Christian Kingdom of Ethiopia from the thirteenth to the twentieth century, Chicago/Adis Ababa, University of Illinois Press, Addis Ababa University Press, 2000. 352 M. TORCINI CORAZZA Nevertheless the traditional, unwritten, Constitution of Ethiopia is the container of principles that governed Ethiopia since the time of the Axumite Empire (V-IV cent. B.C.) and its conversion to Christianity. The sacred book Kebra Nagast (The Glory of Kings) appeared towards the end of the thirteenth century (perhaps between 1270 and 1285), written in Ge’ez, the ancient language of Ethiopia2 and today the language in which the religious books of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church are written3. In this book the legend of Makeda, Queen of Sheba is told, who from her town of Axum went to visit King Solomon of Israel and had a child by him. When he became a man, the son went to visit his father to be recognised by him, and came back bringing with him the “Arc of the Covenant”, stolen from the Jerusalem Temple, and the Judaic faith. Solomon’s son, Menelik I, was considered the first King of Ethiopia. The importance of the “Solomonic Legend” in the constitutional history of Ethiopia – a part from its largely doubtful veracity4 – is linked with the fact that it was intended to legitimate all Rases who claimed to become Emperors. At the same time of the appearance of the Kebra Nagast, during the reign of an usurping dynasty, the Zagwe who had transferred the seat of the empire in the South, the Orthodox Church proclaimed that only the “Solomonic” princes, coming from the Axumite line, were legitimate to reign over Ethiopia. This contributed to the Zagwe Kings suddenly being swept away from the political scenario. What is told in the Kebra Nagast was also believed for a very long time to be a real part of the Ethiopian history and is nowadays a very important part of the religious tradition of the Orthodox Church. We may hold that it contributed to prevent the process of secularization of the State, linking strictly crown, blood descent (real or presumed) and religion. By this way, the legend posed one of the two basic principles of the traditional constitution: the dynastic claim, through which every emperor 2 In the sixth century A.D. the Bible was translated in Ge’ez, one of the few written languages in Africa. About the importance of the ancient Ethiopian languages see: ULLENDORF, E., The Semitic Languages of Ethiopia, London, 1955; CERULLI, E., Storia della Letteratura Etiopica, Milano, 1956. 3 See: BROOKS, M.F., A Modern Translation of the Kebra Nagast (The Glory of the Kings), The Red Sea Press, Inc. Asmara, 1996, passim. 4 Scholars doubt of its veracity for many reasons such as: the Queen of Sheba had been living two centuries after King Solomon; it is likely that she was not a queen of Ethiopia but of Yemen; until its conversion to the monophysite Christianity, the kingdom of Ethiopia was polytheist. STATE AND RELIGION IN ETHIOPIA 353 assumed to be a real descendant of King Solomon, supported by the Orthodox Church. It happened also for the last Emperor, Haile Selassie I, who declared to belong to the Solomonic line. The second basic principle of the traditional constitution, derived from the former, is the absolute fidelity to the Orthodox Church and faith. Even though the principles of a traditional, unwritten constitution do not have a precise formulation, their effectiveness is clear every time an attempt to change them is made, as is shown by history. Two Emper- ors, Za-Dengel (1603 – 1604) in 1604 and Susenyos (1607 – 1632) in 1632, during the “Portuguese period”, tried, not only for religious reasons5, to help Jesuits to replace the Orthodox faith with Catholicism, and both lost the throne and their lives; in the twentieth century, the Emperor Menelik’s grandson, Iyasu, accused of conversion to the Islamic faith, was dethroned. Some parts of the coronation ceremony, used also to anoint the last Emperor, are revealing: before being anointed, the Emperor had to declare by the name of God in front of the Patriarch and the public that he will be protector of the true Orthodox Church. Other principles regarded the impossibility for women to accede to the imperial throne, (though sometimes disregarded, this principle is stressed in the Kebra Nagast: in “Solomon’s conversation with Bayna-Lehkem”, son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, it says: “…and give him the command that a woman shall never again reign in Ethiopia…”)6 and the nomination of the Patriarch of the Orthodox Ethiopian Church (until the end of the Second World War always sent from the Coptic Church of Alexandria). Even the absence of succession provisions, with the 5 The interest of Ethiopian Kings in Catholic faith has two main reasons. A strong link with Western kingdoms, many of them Catholic, was attractive for Ethiopian rulers from Gälawdéwos (1543 – 1559), for they had experienced the crucial effect of the help of a small contingent of foreigner soldiers in their internal conflicts. Moreover, especially Za-Dengel and Susenyos were probably interested in European political development from feudalism to systems of monarchical absolutism, in which religion was deeply involved. The hierarchical and authoritarian organisation of the Catholic Church was a model for a centralised political control which the Ethiopian Church, divided by sectarian controversies and decentralised did not offer. See: CRUMMEY, D., Land and Society…cit., 67. 6 See: BROOKS, M.F., A Modern Translation…cit., 41. It is remarkable that these words are put in the mouth of a woman, the Queen of Sheba. The descent from the female line was also an impediment to a king’s funeral with royal honours, e.g. the case of Emperor Yost’os (1711 – 1716) whose illegitimacy was openly spoken about, even during his reign. See: CRUMMEY, D., Land and Society…cit., 92. 354 M. TORCINI CORAZZA consequence of instability and succession wars, contributed to create the complex system of the traditional Constitution of Ethiopia7. 2. The traditional Constitution: ancient time Before the Christian era, the real importance of religion is almost unknown. A polytheistic religion, based on the worship of the Serpent, introduced maybe from Persia, was probably the most important. Later, Sabaean migrants who arrived in Ethiopia in the first millennium B.C. brought with them their polytheistic religion, with gods from the Arabian Peninsula pantheon. Their contacts with the Greek world are also shown in archaeological sources, e.g. in Adulis, by names of gods like Zeus, Poseidon, Ares, Hermes and Heracles found on inscriptions8. During the Da’amat State, since the sixth century B.C., Judaism also spread: accord- ing to the Jewish tradition and historical sources, the first Hebrews arrived in Ethiopia sometime around eight hundred years after they left Egypt, following rivers through Sudan, in many waves that took centuries. But it is with the conversion to the Christian faith in the fourth cen- tury A.D., during the Axumite Empire, a faith adopted first by the Impe- rial Court and then as a State religion, that the very strong link between State and religion was created. This link deeply penetrated into the Ethiopian society and would be broken formally only with the Derg regime in 1974. It is interesting to notice that, unlike in the Greek and Roman world, where it was thwarted by the ruling classes, Christianity became the official religion of the Axumite kingdom because of the will of the king, and only later did it gradually spread among the people, thanks also to a big effort of proselytism, to which the Emperors contributed actively. After the Axumite Empire had become Christian 7 For a broader analysis of the Ethiopian constitutional development see: PAUL, J.C.N., and CLAPHAM, C., Constitutional Development – A Source Book, vol. I and II, 1960; MULUQAN TADDASA, The comparison and contrast between the 1955 and the 1987 Constitutions of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa University, 1988; MAKONNEN HESE, The Constitutional Experience of Ethiopia (particular emphasis on changes and continuity), Addis Ababa University, 1998.