Ethiopian’s played a major role in the ancient legacy of Christianity. No other country in the world has created such a vast quantity of cross designs as Ethiopia. Based on the simple original intersection of two arms Ethiopians have developed into an infinite number of variations, inspired by the local culture.
The design and decoration of Ethiopian crosses have a spiritual meaning closely related to the deeply felt themes in the local Church, such as the Holy Trinity, the four Evangelists, the twelve Apostles.
The Ethiopian crosses can be divided into three types.
The ‘processional’ crosses are mounted on a long staff and carried by priests during religious ceremonies. Because crosses represent the Triumph of the Cross, processional crosses are ‘dressed’ with rich, colorful fabrics when in use.
The second type was produced in the fifteenth century. They are usually made of silver or brass, with shorter arms and representations on both sides, recto, and verso, featuring devotional subjects not directly related to the Passion of Christ, such as the Virgin and Child, Michael and Gabriel, Archangels, St. George slaying the dragon, and others.
In the 17th century, when Gondar was Ethiopia’s capital, crosses were characterized by the horizontal arms stretching upwards, sometimes folding up to form a circle. Hereafter crosses kept to the Gondar style without any relevant variant.
The majority of crosses are made of metal, but wood is also frequently used for their production. Crosses made from leather or stone are rare. Metallic crosses are, most of the time, made of iron. But bronze and silver are used as well, while golden crosses are more infrequent.
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