Ethiopia is unique among Christian lands for the incomparable prominence of the cross in the life of its people and for the inexhaustible variety and intricacy of decorative patterns on cross-shaped objects of all kinds. Crosses of wondrous diversity and sophistication are extensively used in religious and magic rituals, as well as in the daily social interactions and personal experiences of people in a variety of contexts. This book explores the ways in which Ethiopian crosses reflect and shape a broad range of ideas, from religious beliefs to interrelated socio-political values, and from individual notions of identity and protection to cultural constructs of local and universal dimensions. Thus the cross of the Ethiopian tradition emerges as the sacred matrix that encompasses the life of the world in both its microcosmic and macrocosmic dimensions; and as the social and cultural nexus through which and with which people interact in order to shape and express personal and communal identities and hopes.
The investigation includes textual and visual evidence, as well as aspects of Ethiopian history and cultural tradition, and highlights elements of both continuity and change. Special attention is given to religious rituals in which crosses guide the participants to internalize abstract ideas central to their culture, through sensorial experience and interaction. A main objective of this analysis is to contribute to an understanding of visual creations as interactive depositories and therefore also generators of ideas, with an influential role in identity formation, socio-cultural interactions and the construction of power relations.
REVIEWS
"Usually treated as somewhat folksy products, these crosses have now been subjected to close study by Maria Evangelatou in A Contextual Reading of Ethiopian Crosses Through Form and Ritual. This is a book of stunning beauty, designed to fill the eye with crosses of all shapes and sizes and with vivid images of the occasions, sacred and profane, in which the cross is used. But it is far more than an art book. It is a careful meditation on the imaginative and social function of the cross in the daily life of Ethiopian believers.
Here we find the grand themes that preoccupied the rulers of late medieval Ethiopia translated into exquisite shapes to adorn the skin, to hold in the hand, to carry in moments of glory. They cover the body or wave in the air like great square patches of lacework, for these crosses—the three-dimensional ones, at least—are made up of plaques of woven metal. Even when they are not twined together from separate strands, the complex surfaces are cut so as to give the impression of being held tight by intricate weaving. Such crosses are not reminders of a distant Passion. They are almost living things, seemingly drawn ever tighter by the tension of their knotted threads. This was how God and humankind had been joined in Jesus, in Mary, and, it was hoped, eventually in all believers.
In between the gold, silver, iron, and wood of such crosses, the light that poured through the empty spaces of the delicate web could be seen as glimpses of divinity shimmering behind the fretted surface of the material world. To believe that heaven and earth, spirit and matter, God and humanity could come so close, that some primordial, unfissured unity might again return to earth, was not an ignoble dream. It was one that would be sorely needed as the rulers of Ethiopia entered, standing tall (and with them the many forgotten millions of the Christians of the East), on the first tragic stages of the European Age of Discovery."
