Aksum adopts Christianity

The story is told by the church historian Rufinus, who had it from Frumentius’s brother Aedesius. As boys the two sailed from Tyre with Meropius — their uncle, or in other versions their teacher; when the ship put in at a Red Sea port on the way back, the local people killed the crew and brought the boys to the king of Aksum, who made Aedesius his cupbearer and Frumentius his secretary and treasurer. Freed before the king’s death, they stayed at the queen’s request to help govern during the minority of the heir, Ezana, and Frumentius encouraged the Christian merchants in the country to worship openly. Later he went to Alexandria and asked Bishop Athanasius to send a bishop to Aksum; Athanasius consecrated Frumentius himself — traditionally in 328, or according to others between 340 and 346. Back in Aksum, Frumentius baptised Ezana. Ethiopian tradition remembers him as Abba Salama, “father of peace”.

The conversion shows in Ezana’s own monuments. His earlier inscriptions call him the son of the invincible god Ares (Mahrem), later ones invoke the “Lord of Heaven”, and another names the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; on his coins the pagan disc and crescent gave way to the cross around 340. In the late 350s the emperor Constantius II, a supporter of the Arians, wrote to Ezana and his brother Sazana asking them to send Frumentius to Alexandria to be examined by the Arian bishop George — a letter preserved by Athanasius; it came to nothing. Paganism long persisted in the country — by one account until the end of the 5th century, when the monks known as the Nine Saints came to Aksum after the Council of Chalcedon. The dates are uncertain: the sources range from the 320s to the middle of the 4th century.