Takla Haymanot (known in the Coptic Church as Saint Takla Haymanot of Ethiopia) (c.1215 - c.1313) was an Ethiopian monk who founded a major monastery in his native province of Shewa. He is considered a saint by both the Coptic and Ethiopian Churches. His feast day is August 17.

Early life

Takla Haymanot was born in the district of Bulga on the eastern edge of Shewa, the son of the priest Sagaz Ab ("Gift of Faith") and his wife Egzi'e Haraya ("Choice of God"), who is also known as Sarah. According to tradition, his ancestors had been Christian who had settled in Shewa ten generations before.

His father gave Takla Haymanot his earliest religious instruction; later he was ordained a priest by the Egyptian bishop Qerilos.

During his youth, Shewa was subject to a number of devastating raids by Motalami, the pagan king of Damot. As a result, the morale of Christians in Shewa had weakened, and the practice of paganism increased. There are a number of traditions, some of less historical value than others, that describe Takla Haymanot's interactions with Motalami.

Later career

The first significant point in his

Eventually Takla Haymanot left Dabra Damo with his followers to return to Shewa. On his return route, he stopped at Iyasus Mo'a's monastery in Lake Hayq, where tradition states he received the full investiture of an Ethiopian monk's habit. The historian Taddesse Tamrat sees in the existing accounts of this act an attempt by later writers to justify the seniority of the monastery in Lake Hayq over the followers of Takla Haymanot.¹

Once in Shewa, he introduced the spirit of renewal that Christianity was experiencing in the northern provinces. He settled in the central area between Shilalish and Grarya, where he founded in 1284 the monastery of Dabra Asbo (renamed in the 15th century Dabra Libanos). This monastery became one of the most important religious institutions of Ethiopia, not only founding a number of daughter houses, but its abbot became one of the principal leaders of the Ethiopian Church called the Echege, second

Takla Haymanot lived for 29 years after the foundation of this monastery, dying in the year before Emperor Wedem Arad did; this would date Takla Haymanot's death to 1313. He was first buried in the cave where he had originally lived as a hermit; almost 60 years later he was reinterred at Dabra Libanos. Emperor Haile Selassie constructed a new church at Debre Libanos Monastery in the 1950's over the site of the Saint's tomb. It remains a place of pilgrimage and a favored site for burial for many people across Ethiopia.

Later traditions

Takla Haymanot is frequently represented as an old man with wings on his back and only one leg visible. There are a number of explanations for this popular image. C.F. Beckingham and G.W.B. Huntingford recount one story, that the saint "having stood too long, one of his legs broke, whereupon he stood on one foot for seven years."² Paul B. Henze describes his missing leg as appearing as a "severed leg .. in the lower left corner discreetly wrapped in a cloth."³ The traveller Thomas Pakenham learned from the Prior of Dabra Damo how Takla Haymanot received his wings:

One day he said he would go to Jerusalem to see the Garden of Gethsemane and the hill of blood that is called Golgotha. But Shaitan (Satan) planned to stop Teklahaimanot going on his journey to the Holy Land, and he cut the rope which led from the rock to the ground just as Teklahaimanot started to climb down. Then God gave Teklahaimanot six wings and he flew down to the valley below .. and from that day onwards Teklahaimanot would fly back and forth to Jerusalem above the clouds like an airplane.⁴

Many traditions hold that Takla Haymanot played a significant role in Yekuno Amlak's ascension as the restored monarch of the Solomonid dynasty,⁵, following two centuries of rule by the Zagwe dynasty, although historians like Taddesse Tamrat believe these are later inventions. (A few traditions credit Iyasus Mo'a with this honor.) Another tradition credits Takla Haymanot as the only Abuna born in Ethiopia until the church was granted autocephaly in the 1950s. ⁶

References

1. Taddasse Tamrat, Church and State in Ethiopia (1270-1527) (Oxford, 1972), pp. 160-189
2. C.F. Beckingham and G.W.B. Huntingford, trans. The Prester John of the Indies by Alfonso Alvarez, (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1961), p. 394n.
3. Paul B. Henze, Layers of Time: A History of Ethiopia (New York: Palgrave, 2000), p. 63
4. Thomas Pakenham, The Mountains of Rasselas (New York: Reynal, 1959), p. 84
5. Henze, Layers of Time, p. 62n.50
6. E.A. Wallis Budge, A History of Ethiopia: Nubia and Abyssinia, 1928 (Oosterhout, the Netherlands: Anthropological Publications, 1970), p. 286

See also

• Coptic Christianity
• Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church