2023-11-17 22:05:14
by GIAN ANTONIO STELLA
The city in Ethiopia has the Sepulchre, Golgotha, churches carved into the rock: exposed to the effects of climate change, its masterpieces are also in danger due to the war between the central government and the Amhari rebels
In Italy and in Rome itself, similar wonders are not seen, that is to say the works thus cut from a single block of stone, the Catholic missionary Luigi Montuori wrote enchanted towards the middle of the nineteenth century, I could not help but be admired and surprised in observe truly magnificent Churches and Temples of admirable execution.
He was right. Because Lalibela, the African Jerusalem east of Lake Tana, in the Amhara region, is truly unique in the world. And it chills the blood to know that a few days ago it was touched by shelling in the civil war that has been ongoing for years, intermittently, between truces and revolts, in the Ethiopian highlands. This is where the army of Addis Ababa, which with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali (Christian, of the Oromo ethnic group but with an Amhara ethnic wife, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2019 for his efforts at reconciliation with Eritrea) aims to demilitarize the various local ethnic militias, including young people from the Fano movement (youth in the Amharic language) who rose up years ago against Addis Ababa with the claim of being the true protectors of the Amhari and still today determined not to lay down their arms.
A conflict, although certain schemes are too hasty, between Christians. All the more painful in a continent torn by ethnic and religious wars. Which puts at risk not only an extraordinary universal monumental and artistic heritage protected by UNESCO since 1978, but a place full of magic. In which ancient and wonderful maps, such as that of 1559 by the Portuguese cartographer Diogo Homem, even placed the capital of the mythical kingdom of the Presbyter Iohannes who in 1165, twenty-two years before the fall of Jerusalem under Saladin, had sent a mysterious letter to Byzantium in Latin destined for the emperor Manuel I Comnenus and then ending up in the hands of Pope Alexander III and Frederick Barbarossa.
I, Prester John, am lord of lords and in every wealth under heaven and in virtue and power I surpass all the kings of the earth, said the letter, Our Sovereignty extends over the three Indies (…) where rests the body of the apostle Thomas. Seventy-two kings pay tribute to us. I am a devout Christian and (…) we vow to view the Holy Sepulcher with a very large army, as it befits the glory of our Majesty to humiliate and defeat the enemies of the cross of Christ and exalt his name.
Did that Christian monarch who populated the European imagination for centuries really exist as a sovereign of the Indies hypothesized now in the Asian lands penetrated by Nestorian preaching and now in the African highlands? And how did the legend of him last for centuries if true, as Franco Cardini recalls, that in 1441 Pope Eugene IV tried to send two letters to the greatest temporal lords of monotheistic faith “John, emperor of the Ethiopians” and “Thomas, emperor of the Indians” ?
Of course, the fascinating African Jerusalem, designed precisely in the image of the original with a tomb, a Golgotha to which one ascends via an impervious path, a moat that represents the Jordan and even a Sinai and dispenses pilgrims the same indulgences that those who earn who visit the Holy City, has cultivated its own myths to the fullest. Starting from the one about the founder. In fact, in his Ethiopia (Terra Santa edizioni) Alberto Elli, author of monumental volumes on the history of the Ethiopian Church founded by the Coptic Saint Frumentius in the 4th century AD, writes: According to the Gadl of Lalibela, from the 15th century (the Life of Lalibela, a work more hagiographic than historical), immediately after the birth of the future king, a thick swarm of bees gathered on his cradle. The queen mother, foreseeing her son’s royal destiny and seeing in the bees, who protected him with their stings, the soldiers who would one day serve him, baptized him Lalibela, a name which, according to the hagiographer, would mean “the bees recognize his sovereignty”.
The royal destiny thus predicted to the young man, continues the historian, did not take long to arouse the jealousy of his older brother, the sovereign Harbay, who tried several times to get rid of him, until, with the help of a sister, his attempt it didn’t work: the young prince was given a poisoned potion, which made him fall into a deadly sleep. During the three days of unconsciousness that followed, Lalibela was transported by angels to Heaven and here God ordered him to build churches like he had never seen. Lalibela then returned to Earth with detailed instructions regarding their location and style.
And how could churches built by angels be anything other than amazingly beautiful? Each one, Elli summarizes, is different from all the others, even though they were all excavated with the same technique in the reddish tuff of the mountain: The work of isolation, excavation, tunneling and carving was carried out exclusively by removing the rock, without adding anything subsequently, apart from some more or less modern restorations. Each church is built in a single block of stone anchored to the rock, worked from the outside and perforated to obtain doors, windows, arches, columns and decorations: each of these monolithic architectures is a work of art, a stone monument to the religiosity of the Ethiopian people.
Visit those eleven churches probably built between the end of the 12th and the end of the 13th century, from the Beta Madhane Alam (House of the Savior of the World) to the Beta Maryam i.e. the house of Mary, from the Beta Mika’el to the Beta Giyorgis, the apogee of the rock architectural tradition with its cult of Saint George on the white horse killing the dragon, means immersing oneself deeply into a thousand-year-old devotion. Silences broken only by the sounds of birds in the blue sky. White-robed monks immersed in reading books. Sandals all identical neatly deposited at the entrance of the temples. Discreet beggars perched on the steps. Devotional sheet metal capitals where black grandmothers with black veils venerate a crowned Baby Jesus with milky skin. Frescoes, tapestries and panels with all the iconography of Christianity: the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, the Magdalene, the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well…
A small, very ancient world, precious and at risk. And not only because of the sudden and violent resurgences of the endless conflict between the Ethiopian army and the independence militias, but also because of the progressive degradation over the centuries, accelerated in recent decades due to climate change, of those fragile tuff masterpieces. Exposed to the wear and tear of the downpours, the wind, the furious sun of the highlands. From which they tried to protect them, years ago, gigantic and hideous steel rainproof structures, built by unfortunate local workers, who cry out for revenge to God. Is it possible that new technologies cannot suggest something less impactful?
November 17, 2023 (modified November 17, 2023 | 8:59 pm)
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