Hagiography of the Nine Saints

The alleged “second christianisation” of Ethiopia, which Guidi and especially Conti Rossini attributed to Syriac Christians, was based largely on a body of hagiographic literature, particularly that of the so-called Nine Saints. Brita has convincingly shown that these hagiographies, though speaking about Late Antiquity, are actually medieval productions. Thus, these hagiographies are many centuries removed from the time about which they purport to speak. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, they do not seem to contain reliable historical information about Late Antiquity. This does not, however, mean that that these hagiographies are devoid of value for the historian, but different – and better – questions do need to be asked of them. BeInf aims to explores what function these medieval hagiographies served in the times and places when they were written and promulgated. In particular, BeInf focuses on how these hagiographies provide foundation stories for monasteries in the northern regions of Ethiopia that aim to shore up their prestige not only by providing an aetiology that retrojects their origins into Late Antiquity but also by connecting them to the broader Greco-Roman world.