"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.
