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.
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