The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia—and How It Died

by Philip Jenkins

Counter-Reformation Portugal, where religious houses were far from scarce, asserted that [n]o country in the world is so full of churches, monasteries and ecclesiastics as Abyssinia; it is not possible to sing in one church without being heard by another, and perhaps by several…. this people has a natural disposition to goodness; they are very liberal of their alms, they much frequent their churches, and are very studious to adorn them; they practice fasting and other mortifications…[they] retain in a great measure the devout fervor of the primitive Christians.20 So rich is Ethiopia’s Christian heritage, as it now enters its eighteenth century of existence, that it is impossible to describe it in any detail, but we should stress how absolutely Christian tradition has become established within the East African landscape.