Walatta Petros
Walatta Petros | |
---|---|
Abbess | |
Born | c. 1592 Ethiopian Empire |
Died | 23 November 1642 | (aged 49–50)
Venerated in | |
Patronage | Ethiopians |
Influenced | Ehete Krestos |
Walatta Petros (
Names
Walatta Petros's name in the
Life
Early life
Walatta Petros was born in 1592 into a
Becoming a nun
After
Resisting Roman Catholicism and Emperor Susenyos I
In 1621, Emperor
This was the beginning of her leadership of the religious communities that formed around her of those seeking to escape Roman Catholicism. Over her lifetime, she set up seven religious communities—the first in Sudan, called Zabay (ca. 1627), and six around Lake Tana: Canqua (ca. 1630), Meselle (ca. 1630), Zage (ca. 1632), Damboza (ca. 1637), Afar Faras (ca. 1638), and Zabol/Zambol (ca. 1641).[1]
Meanwhile, in 1632, Emperor Susenyos gave up trying convert the country to Roman Catholicism. His son Fasilides became king, and Fasilides worked to eradicate Roman Catholicism from the country.
Later life
Walatta Petros continued as the abbess of her mobile religious community, leading it with her woman friend Ehete Kristos and without male leadership. After a three-month illness, Walatta Petros died on 23 November 1642 (Hedar 17), at the age of 50, twenty-six years after becoming a nun. It is also said that many people from the Lake Tana islands assembled to mourn her death since she was like a mother to them. Her friend Ehete Krestos succeeded her as abbess of her religious community, until her death in 1649.[1]
In 1650, Fasilides gave land for a monastery on Lake Tana, Qwarata, to be devoted to Walatta Petros. Since the seventeenth century, it has served as a place of asylum for those seeking to escape punishment by the king.[1]
Hagiography
Walatta Petros is one of 21 Ethiopian female saints, six of whom have hagiographies. The saint's hagiography, Gädlä Wälättä P̣eṭros, was written down in 1672, thirty years after the saint's death. The author was a
Over a dozen manuscript copies were made in Ethiopia.[4] The first print edition was published in 1912, based on one manuscript.[5] The first translation into another language, Italian, was published in 1970,[6][7] In 2015, the first English translation was published, which included color plates from the parchment manuscript illuminations of her life, and in 2018 a short student edition was published.[1][8]
Scholarship
Little was published on Walatta Petros in Western scholarship before the 21st century. Written before the corrected, full edition based on 12 manuscripts was published in 2015,[1] incorrect information about her (i.e. birth and death dates, children, travel, and hagiography) appears on these websites,[9][10] encyclopedia entries,[11][12][13][14][15] histories,[16][17] and journal articles: one published in 1902 in Russian[18] and another in 1943 in Italian.[19]
More has been published in the twenty-first century, almost entirely in English. The first was written by the French art historian Claire Bosc-Tiessé, who conducted field research at monasteries on Lake Ṭana about the creation of a royal illuminated manuscript of Gädlä Wälättä P̣eṭros.[20] The Russian historian Sevir Chernetsov published an article arguing that Walatta Petros was a non-gender-conforming saint.[21] The American literary scholar Wendy Laura Belcher argued that Walatta Petros was one of the noble Ethiopian women responsible for the defeat of Roman Catholicism in Ethiopia in the 1600s.[22] Some journalism has been published about the saint as well.[23][24][25]
Controversy has attended the English translation of the Gädlä Wälättä P̣eṭros, starting in October 2014 after one of the co-translators, Belcher, started giving talks about the saint's relationship with Eheta Kristos[26] and due to news coverage of the translation.[27][28] Members of the Ethiopian Orthodox Täwaḥədo Church have stated online that “this book claims Walatta Petros is a lesbian”[29] and have written many comments about sexuality on a Guardian article about the translation.[27] Belcher has published a rebuttal on her website[30] and published a scholarly article on the topic of same-sex sexuality in the hagiography.[31]
In a September 2020 academic article, Dr. Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes argued that Belcher and Kleiner lacked an understanding of the
Notes
- 1.^ This is a portrait of Walatta Petros that appears in the manuscript created between 1716–1721 (and cataloged in different sources as EMML MS No. 8438, Tanasee 179, EMIP 0284, and MS D in the Belcher-Kleiner translation) and was previously found in the saint's monastery Qʷäraṭa on Lake Tana in Ethiopia.
References
- ^ ISBN 978-0691164212.
- ^ Belcher, Wendy. The Translation of the Poem Portrait of Walatta Petros (PDF). Wendy Belcher.
- ^ Belcher, Wendy. The Translation of the Poem Hail to Walatta Petros (PDF). Wendy Belcher.
- ^ Belcher, Wendy. "Gadla Walatta Petros Original Ethiopic Text (The Life-Struggles of Walatta Petros) (MS J, 1672)". www.academia.edu. Retrieved 9 October 2015.
- ^ Galawdewos (1912). Conti Rossini, Carlo (ed.). Vitae sanctorum indigenarum: Acta S. Walatta Petros. Miracula S. Zara-Buruk. I. II (in Latin). Secrétariat du CorpusSCO.
- ISBN 9789042903579.
- ^ Gälawdewos (2004). Gädlä Wälättä P̣eṭros [The Life of Wälättä P̣eṭros: In the Original Gəˁəz and Translated into Amharic). Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: Ethiopian Orthodox Täwaḥədo Church Press.
- ISBN 9780691182919.
- ^ "Santa Walatta Petros". Church Forum. Retrieved 9 October 2015.
- ^ "Sainte Walatta". Nominis. Retrieved 9 October 2015.
- ^ "Walata Petros, Ethiopia, Orthodox". Dictionary of African Christian Biography. Retrieved 9 October 2015.
- ISBN 9780195170559.
- ISBN 9780195382075.
- ISBN 9783447062466.
- ^ Böll, Verena (April 2011). "Walatta Petros (Saint) – Brill Reference". Religion Past and Present. Retrieved 9 October 2015.
- ISBN 9780520067004.
- ISBN 9780191520556.
- ^ Turaev, Boris (1902). Izsledovaniya V Oblasti Agiologicheskih Istochnikov Istorii Etiopii (Studies in the Hagiographic Sources on the History of Ethiopia). St Petersburg, Russia.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Papi, Maria Rosaria (1943). "Una Santa Abissina Anticattolica: Walatta-Petros". Rassegna di Studi Etiopici. 3 (1): 87–93.
- ^ Bosc-Tiessé, Claire (2003). Uhlig, Siegbert (ed.). "Creating an Iconographic Cycle: The Manuscript of the Acts of Wälättä P̣eṭros and the Emergence of Qʷäraṭa as a Place of Asylum". Fifteenth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz: 409–16.
- ^ Chernetsov, Sevir (2005). "A Transgressor of the Norms of Female Behaviour in the Seventeenth-Century Ethiopia: The Heroine of the Life of Our Mother Walatta Petros". Khristianski Vostok (Journal of the Christian East). 10: 48–64.
- .
- ^ "Princeton University – Belcher: Perspective on ancient Ethiopian texts". Princeton University. Retrieved 9 October 2015.
- ^ Zoppo, Avalon (3 December 2014). "Professor discusses African homosexuality". Daily Targum. Retrieved 9 October 2015.
- ^ Howard, Jennifer (21 September 2015). "A Broader Notion of African Literature". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 9 October 2015.
- ^ Belcher, Wendy Laura (27 October 2014). "Same-Sex Intimacies in an Early Modern African Text about an Ethiopian Female Saint, Gädlä Wälättä P̣eṭros (1672)]". UCLA.
- ^ a b Flood, Allison (3 December 2015). "Earliest Known Biography of an African Woman Translated to English for the First Time". The Guardian.
- ^ Miller, Allison (November 2015), "The Saint Who Sent the Jesuits Packing: A New Translation of an Ethiopian Manuscript Sheds Light on African Women's Anticolonialism", Perspectives on History.
- ^ @African_HornET Twitter, December 8 2015
- ^ Belcher, Wendy Laura (9 December 2015). "Controversy over Sexuality in the Gadla Walatta Petros". wendybelcher.com.
- S2CID 148427759.
- ^ a b Woldeyes, Yirga Gelaw (2020). "Colonial Rewriting of African History: Misinterpretations and Distortions in Belcher and Kleiner's Life and Struggles of Walatta Petros" (PDF). Journal of Afroasiatic Languages, History and Culture. 9 (2): 133–220.
- ^ "Open Letter To Princeton University: Black History Matters Too". HagerBekel.org. 6 October 2020. Retrieved 20 January 2021.
- ISBN 978-0-691-16421-2.
- ^ Kleiner, Michael (2020). "Considered Translations Reconsidered. A Rejoinder to Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes's Criticisms of Our Allegedly 'Sexualizing' Translations in The Life and Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros (2015)". wendybelcher.com. Retrieved 20 January 2021.