Frumentius: First Missionary to Ethiopia

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[00:01:29] Martyrs and Missionaries is a production of Revive Studios. You're listening to Martyrs and Missionaries. I'm Elise, and in every episode, I'll bring you a new martyr and or missionary, the called and the brave. In this episode, we're covering the life

[00:01:44] of Frumentius, the man responsible for the Christianization of ancient Ethiopia. This is the first episode of 2023, and over Christmas break and into New Year's, we have had a flood of new listeners across the studio. So if you are a new listener,

[00:02:16] welcome. And if you're an old veteran, welcome back. In this episode, we're going to be talking about Frumentius. We're also going to be talking about ancient Ethiopia, the Axum Empire, even throwing in some Aryanism as well. This will kind of cover honestly a broad spectrum of topics

[00:02:32] because Frumentius is he's really cool, but there's not a whole lot that's known about him. So what I want to do before we actually get into his story is give a background into the Axum

[00:02:42] Empire and a very, very brief overview of up to modern Ethiopia. And I want to point out that before we begin a revived thoughts, our sister podcast has actually done a deep dive on Ethiopia

[00:02:55] that is multiple hours long, and I believe part three will come out soon. So if you are one of our patrons, you have probably already downloaded and listened to the first two. If you are not and you

[00:03:05] would like access to it, I will link the Patreon link for you in the episode description. It's a little bit overwhelming how much history there is to Ethiopia. And in my very biased opinion, I think

[00:03:16] that revived thoughts did an amazing job getting into the nitty gritty details and all the ins and outs that we are not going to cover in this episode per se. If you are familiar with the Axum

[00:03:26] Empire, it's probably because you studied it in middle school in your history classes. That was my first introduction to it. It gets lumped into a very short unit that is comprised of all the different African kingdoms and is primarily concerned with the gold salt trade routes, which

[00:03:43] is by far the most boring way to study history imaginable. The Axum Empire began in the first century and it was huge. It covered Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Yemen, and a few other countries

[00:03:54] as well. And it became a Christian empire by the fourth century, which we will see later on. The kingdom continued to flourish and actually during the early days of Muhammad, they helped shelter some of the Muslims who were being killed by neighboring countries. And because of that, they

[00:04:08] weren't conquered by the Islamic expansion. But as the Islamic empire continued to spread, they became cut off from different parts of Europe and the rest of Christendom. By the 7th or 8th century, the Axum

[00:04:20] Empire was pretty much gone. And Ethiopia as a whole continued to ebb and flow. It lost territories very steadily and was much smaller. And by the 16th century, its influence and power had just almost completely evaporated. Skipping forward a few hundred years to 1848, we have the incident

[00:04:39] with an Ethiopian king who had reached out to Queen Victoria asking her to send people to help them defeat their enemies that were coming in from all sides. I actually covered that story a little

[00:04:48] while back in part two of the Henry Morton Stanley episodes. If you haven't listened to those, I will link them for you below. While pretty much everybody else in Africa is colonized, Ethiopia and Liberia

[00:05:01] never were. Now it's interesting to note that both Ethiopia and Liberia were considered to be Christian nations. In 1896, Italy tried to invade them and they were soundly defeated. But then they came back around during World War II and they actually held Ethiopia for seven years until

[00:05:16] they were defeated by the British in 1941 and Ethiopia's king was reinstated. The Italians were notoriously brutal to them. They used poison gas and tons of other horrible methods. And then in 1974, the communists took over and they killed the same king who had been previously deposed by

[00:05:35] the Italians about 30 years before. The king was under house arrest and they wrote in his death certificate that he had died of respiratory complications but it was later found out that they had strangled him which is quite a cruel way to write that. Thousands of people were murdered,

[00:05:50] they were forced deportations, there were famines. The communists were overthrown in 1991 and the first elections were held in 1995. So with that, we are up to date with the history of Ethiopia. I always think it's interesting to start with where they began and then where they are now

[00:06:06] to kind of give an overview of different countries so hopefully that is helpful to you as well. So with that covered, we're going to go all the way back to the Ethiopian eunuch which is written

[00:06:17] about in Acts 8. And the reason I'm starting here is if you know anything about Ethiopia, you know that there is a collection of Ethiopian Jews that live there and have lived there for a

[00:06:26] very, very, very long time. And there's been a lot of speculation about where they came from, who their descendants of, and things like that. And there really isn't any concrete answer. I'll give a few theories here in a minute. But the Ethiopian eunuch is a very interesting story

[00:06:44] because we're not given any kind of background. Why was the Ethiopian eunuch in Jerusalem to worship? Why was he reading Isaiah 53, the passage of the suffering servant, which is a messianic prophecy. I think there is some amount of historical context that we are missing that

[00:06:59] Philip seems to have and early readers seem to have that we do not have the luxury of having. I could be wrong but that just is what it seems like to me. But how did Judaism spread in Ethiopia?

[00:07:10] So there are a few theories. Some of them have more credibility than others. But there's the Queen of Sheba theory wherein the Queen of Sheba, who we don't know exactly where she's from. She

[00:07:19] could be from the Saba Empire or the Kingdom of Saba. She could be from the Punta Empire. That's a whole interesting study of its own and I'm not going to lie that I definitely went down that rabbit

[00:07:30] hole as I was researching for this episode. The theory goes that the Queen of Sheba has a child with Solomon. He is raised in the court of Solomon and then goes back to Ethiopia to be the first

[00:07:41] Ethiopian Jewish king. The second theory is that they are a lost tribe of Dan. The third theory is that they are descendants of the group that dragged Jeremiah unwillingly with them into Egypt after he

[00:07:54] told them to stay and Nebuchadnezzar attacks Egypt trying to get to them. The theory holds that there was a remnant of those left over that then fled to southern Egypt where there was a temple that

[00:08:03] was dedicated to the Jewish god. It was destroyed in 509 and if you look at it on a map, a logical place for them to go would be Ethiopia. But to be honest, nobody really knows. There are so many

[00:08:16] different theories and some hold more water than others but nobody knows. Skipping forward once again in 313 AD, Constantine issues the Edict of Milan granting religious tolerance to Christianity and as a result believers come out of hiding and this is a flourishing period for the ancient church.

[00:08:36] And now we've finally gotten to Frumentius. There's not a lot known about Frumentius which is not uncommon especially with these guys that are really, really, really old. But we can wager a guess

[00:08:46] that he was born in the earlier part of the 300s which is such a fascinating time for the church and we'll get a little bit more into that in a little while. But we know that Frumentius had an

[00:08:57] uncle. His uncle was a merchant and was quite wealthy and he wanted to take Frumentius and his brother Odysseus to the Axum Empire to do some trading. Now there seems to be some dispute

[00:09:09] ongoing with the Roman Empire at the time so when the ship docked, everyone on board was killed except for Frumentius and his brother. They are taken as slaves and are brought before the king.

[00:09:21] The king recognizes that they're both intelligent, well-read boys and so he makes them his personal slaves which as far as slavery goes in the ancient world is a pretty top tier gig. As far as we can

[00:09:32] tell they live very well and in fact on his deathbed the king frees them to be able to go back home. But when he dies, the queen begs them to stay and help educate her young son King Zanna

[00:09:43] and they agree to do this which is also another sign that they were healthy, well taken care of, etc. While they were helping raise in the young king, they also encouraged Christian merchants

[00:09:53] who were visiting and trading in the empire to practice their faith and they helped them find places to gather and pray. And they actually helped lead some of the locals to faith as well.

[00:10:02] Now when the king is of age and he is ruling on his own, they head out from Axum and Odysseus goes back to Tyre which is modern-day Lebanon which is actually where they're from and he becomes a bishop

[00:10:12] and this is where we get the early history of what happened to them because he tells it to a fourth century historian and theologian named Tyrannus Rufinus who writes it down. And a little

[00:10:22] bit more about Tyrannus is he had several backs and forths with Jerome and he translated the works of origin into Latin. He's one of those interesting guys from the 300s. And Frumentius heads off to Alexandria to ask Bishop Athanasius to send missionaries to Ethiopia. Who is Athanasius

[00:10:38] you may be asking and if you are familiar with the council of Nicaea, his name probably sounds familiar. He was a fierce defender against Arianism and towards the end of his life he is granted a nickname which translates to Athanasius against the world. Arianism was a huge problem

[00:10:54] at this time for the church and it's the belief that Jesus was created by God that he is not co-eternal or equal to the father. And when Frumentius comes to Athanasius he thinks why

[00:11:04] don't I just send you? You know the language, you know the layout, you know everything about the Axum empire so he sends Frumentius back as the bishop of Ethiopia. And not long after he's back

[00:11:14] King Azana becomes a Christian and Christianity slowly begins to trickle through the royal family, the court, and beyond. Several churches are built and Christianity is off to a great start in Ethiopia. Now going back to the Arian controversy, the council of Nicaea was convened

[00:11:31] by Constantine in 325 and despite the overwhelming condemnation against the Arian position by the council, Constantine held to Arianism in his later years. And his son Constantius held to the position even more firmly than his father. And as this early church is flourishing a wrench

[00:11:48] is thrown into the works. Constantius writes to King Azana asking him to replace Frumentius who had been appointed by Athanasius, hater of Arianism and a honestly a thorn in the side of Constantius for another guy who was a supporter of Arianism. And I want to share this letter

[00:12:06] from Constantius because it sounds like such a reasonable request and it's also rare that we get letters like this so I enjoy reading them when we can. It is altogether a matter of the greatest care and concern to us to extend the knowledge of

[00:12:21] the supreme God and I think that the whole race of mankind claims from us equal regard in this respect in order that they may pass their lives and hope being brought to a proper knowledge of

[00:12:30] God and having no differences with each other in their inquiries concerning justice and truth. Wherefore considering that you are deserving of the same provident care as the Romans and desiring to show equal regard for your welfare we command that the same doctrine be

[00:12:43] professed in your churches as in theirs. Therefore send speedily into Egypt the bishop Frumentius to the most venerable Bishop George and the rest who are there who have a special authority to appoint to these offices and to decide questions concerning them. For of course you know and

[00:12:59] remember unless you alone pretend to be ignorant of that which all men are well aware of that this Frumentius was advanced to his present rank by Athanasius a man who was guilty of 10,000 crimes

[00:13:09] for he has not been able to fairly clear himself of any of the charges brought against him but was at once deprived of his sea and now wonders about destitute of any fixed abode and passes from one

[00:13:19] country to another as if by this means he could escape his own wickedness. Now if Frumentius shall readily obey our commands and shall submit to an inquiry of all the circumstances of his

[00:13:29] appointment he will show plainly to all men that he is in no respect opposed to the laws of the church and the established faith and being brought to trial when he shall have given proof of his

[00:13:39] good general conduct and submitted an account of his life to those who are to judge of these things he shall receive an appointment from them. It will surely be very evident that he has been

[00:13:47] induced by the persuasions of the wicked Athanasius thus to indulge in piety against God choosing to follow the course of him whose wickedness has been made manifest and our fear is less that he should

[00:13:58] pass over into Aximus and corrupt your people by setting before them accursed and impious statements and not only unsettle and disturb the churches and blaspheme the supreme God but also thereby cause utter overthrow and destruction to the several nations whom he visits. But I am sure that

[00:14:13] Frumentius will return home perfectly acquainted with all matters that concern the church having derived much instruction which will be of a great and general utility from the conversation of the most venerable George and such other of the bishops as are equally qualified to communicate

[00:14:29] such knowledge. May God continually preserve you most honored brethren. It's a very wordy veiled threat but on the other side it sounds very reasonable like hey if Athanasius is doing these kind of things if he's speaking out against a god and kind of spreading a heresy then wouldn't

[00:14:46] you want to fix it? And if Athanasius is appointed Frumentius then Frumentius is corrupted and he should go back to see the other bishops and get proper training in this you know to become more

[00:14:57] orthodox basically. My point in sharing this is to show how reasonable that ancient heresies and controversies sound they just want you to compromise a little bit and we tend to think that

[00:15:09] for example Arianism was over at the council of Nicaea but it went on for a very long time after that and as we know heresies never fully go away they just repackage themselves for future generations and appeal to your intellect and to your compassion. King Isona completely disregards

[00:15:27] the letter and Frumentius is kept as the bishop of the Axum empire and over the course of his life he translates the new testament into Ge'ez which was the Ethiopian language at the time and he

[00:15:37] actually helps them develop a new written script that is still used by the Ethiopian churches today as a liturgical language much the same as Latin is used in the Roman Catholic tradition.

[00:15:48] We're not entirely sure when he died it seems to be maybe around 385 but I think the biggest takeaway from Frumentius' story is what begins as a rather harrowing horrific experience for

[00:15:59] Frumentius and his brother you imagine this is an exciting trip you are going with your uncle on a merchant ship you're going to see new and exciting places and instead your uncle is butchered in front

[00:16:09] of you and everybody on the ship is killed and you're taken as a prisoner in a foreign land and you're young and hearing that you think nothing good can come of this this is a terrible

[00:16:18] situation but even in such a horrible situation God used this to bring the gospel to Ethiopia and this is not something unique just to Frumentius. God has been doing this since the beginning of time using these terrible circumstances to bring about his glory and if after this episode

[00:16:35] you are craving more knowledge of Ethiopia and its history then by all means please check out the deep dive it's it will satisfy every question I assure you that you've ever had about Ethiopia

[00:16:46] even the questions you didn't know you had so give a listen part three is coming soon. I am really looking forward to all of the amazing people and all the amazing stories that we're going to hear

[00:16:56] about this year. I have a rapidly growing list thanks to you guys who send me suggestions so if you've sent me one thank you very much and know that I appreciate it and keep them coming as always thank you for listening to Marissa Missionaries, I'm Elise.

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