The Indigenous and the Foreign in Christian Ethiopian Art: On Portuguese-Ethiopian Contacts in the 16thû17th Centuries

In the rural plateaux of northern Ethiopia, one can still find scattered ruins of monumental buildings that are evidently alien to the country's ancient architectural tradition. This little-known and rarely studied architectural heritage is a silent witness to a fascinating if equivocal cultural encounter that took place in the 16th-17th centuries between Catholic Europeans and Orthodox Ethiopians. The Indigenous and the Foreign in Christian Ethiopian Art presents a selection of papers derived from the 5th Conference on the History of Ethiopian Art, which for the first time systematically approached this heritage.The book explores the enduring impact of this encounter on the artistic, religious and political life of Ethiopia, an impact that has not been readily acknowledged, not least because the public conversion of the early 17th-century Emperor Susïnyus to Catholicism resulted in a bloody civil war shrouded in religious intolerance. Bringing together work by key researchers in the field, these studies open up a particularly rich period in the history of Ethiopia and cast new light on the complexities of cultural and religious (mis)encounters between Africa and Europe.

Isabel Boavida, Instituto de Cultura Espanhola, Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa Manuel Joao Ramos, Departamento de Antropologia, ISCTE, Lisboa Stephen Bell, Independent researcher LaVerle Berry, The Library of Congress, Washington DC Claire Bosc-Tiesse, University of Paris-I Sorbonne, Centre de Recherches Africaines Ian Campbell, World Bank consultant and private researcher Stanislaw Chojnacki, Independent researcher Girma Fisseha, Staatliches Museum fur Volkerkunde, Munich Michael Gervers, Department of Humanities, University of Toronto at Scarborough Fasil Giorghis, Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, Technology Faculty, Addis Ababa University Martha H. Henze, Independent researcher Paul B. Henze, Independent researcher Richard Pankhurst, Society of Friends of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa University Tania C. Tribe, Department of Art and Archaeology, SOAS, University of London Anais Wion, University of Paris-I Sorbonne, Centre de Recherches Africaines