Italian scholarship - and the new Ethiopian Millennium

As the New Ethiopian Millennium approaches many of us are coming up with Wish Lists for the Golden Future ahead of us.

Surveying the broad field of Ethiopian Studies we focus today on the contribution of Italian writers – and will urge the need for a comprehensive, and up-to-date, bibliography of their works.

We hope to turn to scholarship of other countries in later issues.

Venice
Serious Italian studies of Ethiopia are among the oldest in the world, and date back well over half a millennium. The country, by the early fifteenth century, was not unknown to Venetian merchants interested in the spice trade.
Italian awareness of Ethiopia, however, expanded greatly in 1441, when two Ethiopian monks from Jerusalem arrived to attend that year’s Council of Florence.

Fra Mauro, Alessandro Zorzi, and Andrea Corsali
One of the earliest visible results of the coming of Ethiopians to Italy was that the renowned Venetian map-maker Fra Mauro included a considerable amount of information on their country in his famous map of the world, produced only a few years later,
In the following decades many Ethiopian pilgrims, made their way to Italy – where several of them were interrogated about their country. One of the most important to do so was another Venetian, Alessandro Zorzi, who inquired in particular about the route they had travelled to reach Europe. He recorded his findings in a series of Itineraries, which are crucial for an understanding of early medieval Ethiopia.
Travel between the two countries was, however a two-way affair. Italians coming to Ethiopia in late 15th or early 16th century included a Florentine merchant, Andrea Corsali, who planned to set up a printing-press in Shawa, and two Venetian artists, Nicolo Brancaleone and Gregorio Bicini, who painted for Emperor Lebna Dengel.
Santo Stefano dei Mori
The Ethiopians in Rome at that time were attached to the Church of Santo Stefano dei Mori, as it was generally called. In 1539, however, the then Pope allocated them a hostel just behind St Peter’s as their official home. Here was established the famous Collegio Etiopico, or Ethiopian College, which became a major centre of Ethiopian scholarship.
J. Potken
At the Church of Santa Stefano the scholarly German printer J. Potken of Cologne heard pilgrims from far-off Ethiopia celebrating Mass. This inspired him to establish in Rome the first printing-press to employ Ethiopic characters. On that press he produced the first works ever printed in Ge’ez: the Psalms, Canticles, and Old and New Testament hymns, in 1553.
Abba Tasfa Seyon
This initiative led Abba Tasfa Seyon, a scholarly monk from Dabra Libanos in Shawa, to print a Ge’ez edition of the New Testament in Rome, in 1548-9.
The printing of these texts caused several scholars in the Eternal City to take a keen interest in Ge’ez. The earliest of them was Marianus Victorius, who studied with Abba Tasfa Seyon, and in 1548 published the first Ge’ez grammar ever printed.
Though Abba Tasfa Seyon died in 1550 – and was buried in the Church of Santo Stefano, his initiative continued to bear fruit. Several European scholars made their way to Rome - to learn from the Ethiopian monks there. Foremost among these visiting European scholars was Joseph Scalinger, who wrote on the Ethiopian calendar; and J. Wemmers, of Antwerp, who published the first Ge’ez dictionary, in 1638.
Job Ludolf and Abba Gorgoreyos
One of the most important events in the history of Ethiopian scholarship abroad occurred in Rome just over a decade later, in 1649. Job Ludolf , a young German scholar wishing to study Ge’ez, visited the Church of San Stefano. Though he had learnt a little from the above-mentioned works of Marianus Victorius and Wemmers he had never heard Ge’ez spoken – and had no idea how it was pronounced. He relates that when he tried to read a Ge’ez manuscript aloud, the Ethiopians “could not abstain from laughter” – but when he began to interpret the text “their Laughter turned to Admiration”. Thus began the scholarly association between Ludolf and an Ethiopian scholar, Abba Gorgoryeos, or Gregory, which enabled the German to lay the foundation of subsequent Ethiopian studies in Europe.
Giacomo Baratti and Luigi Balugani
Knowledge of Ethiopia in the ensuing period owed much to the writings of the mysterious 17th century Italian traveler Giacomo Baratti – about whose personal life remarkably little is known; and to the diligent work of the 18th century Italian draftsman Luigi Balugani - whose achievement the Scottish traveler James Bruce ungenerously claimed as his own.
The 19th and 20th Century Travel and Scholarship
Italian travelers were no less important – but far more numerous - in the 19th century. They included missionaries, among them Giuseppe Sapeto and Guglielmo Massaja; “explorers”. including Antonio Cecchi, Arturo Antinori, Augusto Salimbeni, Pellegrino Matteucci, Pippo Vigoni – and many, many others.
Then there are the works on Ethiopia by Italian doctors, some, like Dr Lincoln de Castro. attached to the pre-war Italian Legation; diplomats; military men, political pontificators, as well as scientists of all kinds, etc., etc..
This period also witnessed the emergence of the most important Italian scholars of Ethiopian Studies: Ignazio Guidi, compiler of a praise-worthy Amharic-Italian Vocabolario, or Dictionary, and translator of the Fetha Nagast, or Laws of the Kings; Carlo Conti Rossini, founder of the scholarly journal Rassegna di Studi Etiopiche; and Enrico Cerulli, convener in 1959 of the first International Conference of Ethiopian Studies. Side by side with such Italian Ethiopisants, mention should be made of Italian-Eritrean writers, most notably Alberto Pollera, and a school of Anti-Fascist, Anti-Colonialist, Italian scholars, among them Gaetaino Salvemini, Angelo Del Boca, editor of Studi Piacentini and more recently of I Sentieri della Ricerca, and Giorgio Rochat. They too have organized several conferences on Italo-Ethiopian relations,
Bibliographers and Bibliographies
Mention should also have been made of the great Italian bibliographers Giuseppe Fumagalli and Silvio Zanutto, whose writings have contributed greatly to Ethiopian Studies.
And that brings us to today’s Wish List: It is that that an Italian scholar - or group of scholars – should produce an up-to-date Bibliography of works on Ethiopia in Italian.
Comprehensive Bibliographies of such works in German and English were compiled by old friend Hans Lockot, in 1982 and 1996 respectively – we now need one in Italian - for the new Ethiopian Millennium!