De
Gemmis, Etc., P. 15; R. Bacon, Opus Majus, P. 148; Matt.
Paris, p.
372.)
Wadding gives a letter from the Pope (Alex. II.) under date 3rd Sept.
1329, addressed to the Emperor of Ethiopia, to inform him of the
appointment of a Bishop of Diagorgan. As this place is the capital of a
district near Tabriz (Dehi-Khorkhan) the papal geography looks a little
hazy.
NOTE 2. - The allegation against the Abyssinian Christians, sometimes
extended to the whole Jacobite Church, that they accompanied the rite of
Baptism by branding with a hot iron on the face, is pretty old and
persistent.
The letter quoted from Matt. Paris in the preceding note relates of the
Jacobite Christians "who occupy the kingdoms between Nubia and India,"
that some of them brand the foreheads of their children before Baptism
with a hot iron (p. 302). A quaint Low-German account of the East, in a
MS. of the 14th century, tells of the Christians of India that when a
Bishop ordains a priest he fires him with a sharp and hot iron from the
forehead down the nose, and the scar of this wound abides till the day of
his death. And this they do for a token that the Holy Ghost came on the
Apostles with fire. Frescobaldi says those called the Christians of the
Girdle were the sect which baptized by branding on the head and temples.
Clavijo says there is such a sect among the Christians of India, but they
are despised by the rest. Barbosa, speaking of the Abyssinians, has this
passage: "According to what is said, their baptism is threefold, viz., by
blood, by fire, and by water. For they use circumcision like the Jews,
they brand on the forehead with a hot iron, and they baptize with water
like Catholic Christians." The respectable Pierre Belon speaks of the
Christians of Prester John, called Abyssinians, as baptized with fire and
branded in three places, i.e. between the eyes and on either cheek.
Linschoten repeats the like, and one of his plates is entitled Habitus
Abissinorum quibus loco Baptismatis frons inuritur. Ariosto, referring to
the Emperor of Ethiopia, has: -
"Gli e, s' io non piglio errore, in questo loco
Ove al baltesimo loro usano il fuoco."
As late as 1819 the traveller Dupre published the same statement about the
Jacobites generally. And so sober and learned a man as Assemani, himself
an Oriental, says: "Aethiopes vero, seu Abissini, praeter circumcisionem
adhibent etiam ferrum candens, quo pueris notam inurunt."
Yet Ludolf's Abyssinian friend, Abba Gregory, denied that there was any
such practice among them. Ludolf says it is the custom of various African
tribes, both Pagan and Mussulman, to cauterize their children in the veins
of the temples, in order to inure them against colds, and that this, being
practised by some Abyssinians, was taken for a religious rite. In spite of
the terms "Pagan and Mussulman," I suspect that Herodotus was the
authority for this practice. He states that many of the nomad Libyans,
when their children reached the age of four, used to burn the veins at the
top of the head with a flock of wool; others burned the veins about the
temples.
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