Sheba

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THE KEBRA NAGAST
with a recent history of its kings already being associated with a god
(Mahrem), would find the idea of association with the divine Christ
attractive. However the Aksumite belief that they were close relatives of
the divine Christ did not make an impact on their kings until the late fifth
and early sixth centuries when the Nine Saints (Syriac-speaking
Monophysite scholar-missionaries from southern Arabia) convinced the
Aksumite king Caleb to assume a global role using his supposed royal
Davidic relationship with Christ to powerful political advantage.
Christianity in Aksum has always been associated with the monarchy -
the precedent established in Rome. Christianity became the Roman
Empire’s official religion in the reign of the Emperor Constantine the Great
(A.D. 312–337). As discussed earlier, all but two of the assembled church
leaders at the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325 signed the document agreeing
that Christ was of “one substance” (homoousios) with the Father and the
Holy Spirit in a divine Trinity that had existed since the beginning of time.
The Council of Nicaea denounced the Alexandrian theologian Arius for
heresy, condemning his contention that Christ was subordinate to the Father
and had a human not a divine substance. Despite this agreement at Nicaea,
controversy continued and at the Council of Chalcedon in October A.D.
451, the problem of the relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost in the Trinity again threatened to split the church. This time between
five to six hundred bishops attended and drew up a new statement of faith,
the Chalcedonian Definition. Not only was the Arian standpoint repudiated
but also that of Nicaea, for Christ was proclaimed to have been a single
being with two natures, human and divine. The Syrian, Armenian, Egyptian,
and Aksumite churches refused to accept this ruling, adhering to the
Monophysite doctrine of Nicaea, that Christ had a single divine nature, a
ruling passionately supported by the Kebra Nagast. The theological dispute
of the single or twin natures was exacerbated when discontented peoples in
the eastern provinces used it to distance themselves from Byzantium and its
taxes. Indeed, Byzantium* 1 had been reluctant to take drastic measures
against the Egyptian Monophysite Copts because of the imperial
dependency on Egyptian corn supplies. In A.D. 482, the Byzantine emperor
Zeno (A.D. 474-491) tried to appease the Monophysites by introducing a
* The Roman Empire had been divided into two, West and East. The Roman Empire of the
West fell in A.D. 478 when Rome was captured by Germanic invaders. From then till 1453 the
Roman Empire was ruled from Byzantium (Constantinople).