A Husband That Doth Not Like His Wife May Easily Find Means To Make
The Marriage Void, And, What Is
Worse, may dismiss the second wife
with less difficulty than he took her, and return to the first; so
that
Marriages in this country are only for a term of years, and
last no longer than both parties are pleased with each other, which
is one instance how far distant these people are from the purity of
the primitive believers, which they pretend to have preserved with
so great strictness. The marriages are in short no more than
bargains, made with this proviso, that when any discontent shall
arise on either side, they may separate, and marry whom they please,
each taking back what they brought with them.
Chapter IV
An account of the religion of the Abyssins.
Yet though there is a great difference between our manners, customs,
civil government, and those of the Abyssins, there is yet a much
greater in points of faith; for so many errors have been introduced
and ingrafted into their religion, by their ignorance, their
separation from the Catholic Church, and their intercourse with
Jews, Pagans, and Mohammedans, that their present religion is
nothing but a kind of confused miscellany of Jewish and Mohammedan
superstitions, with which they have corrupted those remnants of
Christianity which they still retain.
They have, however, preserved the belief of our principal mysteries;
they celebrate with a great deal of piety the passion of our Lord;
they reverence the cross; they pay a great devotion to the Blessed
Virgin, the angels, and the saints; they observe the festivals, and
pay a strict regard to the Sunday. Every month they commemorate the
assumption of the Virgin Mary, and are of opinion that no Christians
beside themselves have a true sense of the greatness of the mother
of God, or pay her the honours that are due to her. There are some
tribes amongst them (for they are distinguished like the Jews by
their tribes), among whom the crime of swearing by the name of the
Virgin is punished with forfeiture of goods and even with loss of
life; they are equally scrupulous of swearing by St. George. Every
week they keep a feast to the honour of the apostles and angels;
they come to mass with great devotion, and love to hear the word of
God. They receive the sacrament often, but do not always prepare
themselves by confession. Their charity to the poor may be said to
exceed the proper bounds that prudence ought to set it, for it
contributes to encourage great numbers of beggars, which are a great
annoyance to the whole kingdom, and as I have often said, afford
more exercise to a Christian's patience than his charity; for their
insolence is such, that they will refuse what is offered them if it
be not so much as they think proper to ask.
Though the Abyssins have not many images, they have great numbers of
pictures, and perhaps pay them somewhat too high a degree of
worship. The severity of their fasts is equal to that of the
primitive church. In Lent they never eat till after sunset; their
fasts are the more severe because milk and butter are forbidden
them, and no reason or necessity whatsoever can procure them a
permission to eat meat, and their country affording no fish, they
live only on roots and pulse. On fast-days they never drink but at
their meat, and the priests never communicate till evening, for fear
of profaning them. They do not think themselves obliged to fast
till they have children either married or fit to be married, which
yet doth not secure them very long from these mortifications,
because their youths marry at the age of ten years, and their girls
younger.
There is no nation where excommunication carries greater terrors
than among the Abyssins, which puts it in the power of the priests
to abuse this religious temper of the people, as well as the
authority they receive from it, by excommunicating them, as they
often do, for the least trifle in which their interest is concerned.
No country in the world is so full of churches, monasteries, and
ecclesiastics as Abyssinia; it is not possible to sing in one church
or monastery without being heard by another, and perhaps by several.
They sing the psalms of David, of which, as well as the other parts
of the Holy Scriptures, they have a very exact translation in their
own language; in which, though accounted canonical, the books of the
Maccabees are omitted. The instruments of music made use of in
their rites of worship are little drums, which they hang about their
necks, and beat with both their hands; these are carried even by
their chief men, and by the gravest of their ecclesiastics. They
have sticks likewise, with which they strike the ground,
accompanying the blow with a motion of their whole bodies. They
begin their concert by stamping their feet on the ground, and
playing gently on their instruments; but when they have heated
themselves by degrees, they leave off drumming, and fall to leaping,
dancing, and clapping their hands, at the same time straining their
voices to the utmost pitch, till at length they have no regard
either to the tune or the pauses, and seem rather a riotous than a
religious assembly. For this manner of worship they cite the psalm
of David, "O clap your hands all ye nations." Thus they misapply
the sacred writings to defend practices yet more corrupt than those
I have been speaking of.
They are possessed with a strange notion that they are the only true
Christians in the world; as for us, they shunned us as heretics, and
were under the greatest surprise at hearing us mention the Virgin
Mary with the respect which is due to her, and told us that we could
not be entirely barbarians since we were acquainted with the mother
of God.
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