The Monastery of Libano Debre and the Ethiopian Marian devotion

Debre Libanos · Ethiopia · Monastery founded in 1284 by San Tekle Haymanot

Debre Libanos is one of the most important monasteries of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church Tewahedo. Founded in 1284 by San Tekle Haymanot, it is located north-west of Addis Ababa in the area of Shewa North of the Oromia region. His abbot, named Ichege, was the second most powerful official of the Ethiopian Church after the Abuna. The monastery houses a deep Marian devotion and a sacred cave with water considered miraculous.

San Tekle Haymanot and the foundation

Tekle Haymanot left his native land of Shewa to go to Debre Damo before he founded the monastery. On his return, he introduced the spirit of renewal that Christianity experienced in the northern provinces. It settled in the central area between Selale and Grarya, where it founded in 1284 the monastery of Debre Atsbo, which was renamed Debre Libanos in the 15th century. The monastery became one of Ethiopia's most important religious institutions, not only by founding numerous daughter houses, but by raising its abbot to the position of Ichege, second only after the Abuna in the hierarchy of the Ethiopian Church.

Tekle Haymanot prayed in a cave over the monastery for 29 years. He was buried in that cave around 1313 and his remains were transferred to the monastery about 60 years later.

Destruction and reconstruction

El monasterio sufrió una gran destrucción durante la invasión de Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi, cuando uno de sus seguidores, Ura’i Abu Bakr, lo incendió el 21 de julio de 1531, a pesar de los intentos de la comunidad por rescatar la iglesia mediante un rescate. Los edificios no fueron completamente reconstruidos hasta después de la visita del Emperador Iyasu el Grande en 1699.

On May 21, 1937, following the attempted murder of the Italian Governor General Rodolfo Graziani, he ordered the massacre of the monks and novices of the monastery. On that day, 297 monks and 23 lay people were killed. In total, between 1,700 and 2,100 civilians were killed in two mass executions on 21 and 26 May 1937. When David Buxton visited Debre Libanos in the mid-1940s, he found the remains of the victims in sight: "Here were countless bones and skulls - bones in bags and bones in boxes, bones in confused piles, waiting to be buried."

The church and the sacred cave

None of Debre Libanos's original buildings survive. The current buildings include the church on the tomb of Tekle Haymanot, ordered to be built by Emperor Haile Selassie in 1961 and designed by Professor Hector Corfiato; the slightly older Church of the Cross, where a fragment of the Vera Cross is preserved; and five religious schools. The facade windows were performed by E.O. Hevezi and G.J. Bajo, and exhibited at the London Hall Festival.

The cave where the saint lived is located on the nearby cliffs, about five minutes on foot. This cave contains a spring whose water is considered sacred and the object of pilgrimages.

The devotion to Mary in Ethiopia

La Virgen María (Maryam en ge’ez y amárico) es la santa más venerada de la Iglesia ortodoxa etíope. La fiesta más importante es Filseta (15 de agosto), la Asunción de María, que es una de las grandes solemnidades del año litúrgico. En Debre Libanos, como en todo el país, los fieles acuden a las iglesias marianas para orar, encender velas y ofrecer incienso. La devoción mariana etíope se expresa a través de himnos (qene), danzas litúrgicas y procesiones que combinan la tradición cristiana antigua con elementos culturales únicos del Cuerno de África.