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Lecture Archive |
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Christianity's First Centuries in Africa |
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| Introduction By Helen C. Evans |
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 figure 3  figure 4  figure 5 |
As the Museum’s Mary and Michael Jaharis
Galleries show, Christianity arrived in Africa as part of the spread
of what was a universal church in the late Roman and early Byzantine
centuries. Brandie Ratliff, a doctoral student at Columbia University,
will speak today about the universality of the early church in
the region. [figure
3] Her talk “Outside
In: Saint Catherine’s Monastery and the Early Church in Egypt” focuses
on one of the most ancient sites on the Sinai Peninsula, which
has remained throughout the centuries closely attached to the major
ecclesiastical centers of the early church: Alexandria, Jerusalem,
Antioch, Rome, and most especially Constantinople and the Orthodox
Church developed there. Ms. Ratliff has spent time at the Holy
Monastery, as it is one of the major sites that she has studied
for her dissertation on pilgrimage, that is, the travel of people
to holy sites associated with especially sanctified people or places.
As a graduate intern and then as a fellow at the Metropolitan Museum,
she extended her research on the Holy Monastery through her participation
in the Museum’s
2004 exhibition Byzantium:
Faith and Power which
included forty compelling icons and manuscripts from the Holy Monastery.
For more information that she has provided
on the Holy Monastery of St. Catherine do go to the Museum’s website
where you will find her pictorial essay on the monastery
in the section on Byzantium:
Faith and Power. You might also
be interested in the chapter on the site in the exhibition catalogue
Byzantium: Faith and Power and the picture book Saint
Catherine’s
Monastery, Sinai, Egypt, both of which were published by the
Museum in conjunction with the exhibition. Lecture: Outside In: Saint Catherine's Monastery and the Early Church in Egypt Many of you here know that in Egypt, the early church would become the Coptic Church that is so well represented here today. One of the most famous sites of the Coptic Church is the Holy Monastery of Saint Antony near the Red Sea. I hope you have read the New York Times article on the recent discovery there by Father Maximous Elantony of monastic cells that date back to the third century. Our next speaker, Professor Elizabeth Bolman, has worked with Father Maximous for many years on other structures at the Monastery of Saint Antony. [figure 4] A professor at Temple University, Professor Bolman’s doctoral dissertation for Bryn Mawr College focused on the Coptic origins of the image of the Nursing Virgin, the Galaktotropohousa. Now with Father Maximous’ encouragement and that of the Coptic Church in Egypt as well as that of Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, Professor Bolman has begun most exciting work at the fifth century Red Monastery at Sohag, in the Nile Valley, in Egypt. Her international team, with support from the American Research Center in Egypt and the National Endowment for the Humanities among others, is uncovering vibrant images that have long been lost to the world. Today she will lead us on a tour of some of her discoveries that are helping us rethink our understanding of the development of Christianity in Egypt. Please welcome Professor Bolman to speak on “From Black and White to Technicolor: The Red Monastery, Sohag, Egypt.” Lecture: Chromatic Brilliance in Upper Egypt: The Red Monastery Church I cannot send you to a book on the work at Sohag as its restoration is, as you can tell, a work in progress. However, if you are interested in the Holy Monastery of Saint Antony, I would urge you to look for Professor Bolman’s text on Monastic Visions: Wall Paintings in the Monastery of St. Antony at the Red Sea which was published by the American Research Center in Egypt and Yale University Press in 2002. Christianity quickly reached along the Red Sea to the peoples of Ethiopia in the first centuries of the Common Era. While few, if any, works from that period survive, I am always fascinated that the country, as an ally of Byzantium, assisted in the expansion of the early church by conquering Yemen in the sixth century and converting its citizens, if only briefly, to Christianity. My colleague Alisa LaGamma of the Department of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas studies the Museum’s small but outstanding collection of Christian objects from Ethiopia. A specialist on African art with a doctorate from Columbia University, she has presented many facets of African culture in exhibitions here at the Museum. As part of her research on the Christian art of Ethiopia, she recently spent a month there visiting a number of its great Christian sites. When I asked her if she would want to talk about what she saw as part of this program, her immediate response was “Yes, but I have to ask Chester Higgins to help with the images, as his work is so exceptional.” As you all know, Chester Higgins is an outstanding documentary photographer for the New York Times. He has traveled extensively in Ethiopia recording its monuments and its people. When approached by Dr. LaGamma, he generously agreed to join her in a presentation on “Reflections on Christianity: Two Perspective on Ethiopia’s Living Tradition.” Please welcome Dr. LaGamma and Mr. Higgins. [figure 5] Lecture: Reflections on Christianity: Two Perspectives on Ethiopia’s Living Tradition For those of you who enjoyed Mr. Higgins’ images as much as I have, I would urge you to go to our bookstore and acquire his new book Echo of the Spirit: A Photographer’s Journey, a Memoir. He has been generous enough to make signed copies available. Several of the other books that I mentioned are also available in the bookstore in the Medieval section. I would like to thank you all very much for coming to today’s program. We are not going to have a question-and-answer session today, but our speakers will be here at the front of the room for a while if any of you would like to speak to them. I would urge you also to go see our Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries of Byzantine art, including our stunning works from Egypt. To do that you go back to the Museum’s entrance and go to the galleries on each side and beneath our Great Staircase. Please also go to the far end of our building and then turn toward Central Park. In the first gallery of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, near the middle of the room, you will see a case with a magnificent Ethiopian manuscript and cross. For those of you interested in Egypt as much as Christianity there, do see the exhibition across the hall from this auditorium on medical practices in pre-Christian Egypt, a fascinating survey of a unique surviving text, and for those of you interested in the Middle Ages, do go to our second floor and see the beautiful exhibition on “Prague: Crown of Bohemia.” Its art may not have directly reflected the Christian traditions of Africa, but Prague and Africa do meet, as both were inspired at times by Christian images of the Byzantine world. Thank you for coming and for helping us to make more and more people aware of the importance of the expansion of Christianity into Africa in the first centuries of the Christian era. Please come again to see our works of this era and others. |
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