Feast day: October 27

St. Frumentius

Bishop · d. c. 383

Patron of Ethiopia

A young man shipwrecked and enslaved on the African coast who rose to influence at the royal court, won it to Christianity, and was consecrated the first bishop of Ethiopia.

Frumentius is honoured as the apostle of Ethiopia, the man who first planted the Christian faith in that ancient African kingdom in the fourth century. His remarkable story is preserved by early Church historians, drawing on the testimony of his own companion.

As a boy, a Greek from Tyre, Frumentius set out on a voyage along the African coast with his uncle and his brother Edesius. When their ship put in for supplies, the crew was massacred, and the two boys alone were spared and taken to the court of the king of Axum, in what is now Ethiopia, where they grew up in royal service and rose to positions of trust.

Given their freedom, they did not simply go home. Frumentius had used his position to seek out the Christian merchants trading in the kingdom and to foster the faith, and he now travelled to Alexandria to ask the great bishop St. Athanasius to send a bishop to the new Christians of Ethiopia. Athanasius decided that no one was better suited than Frumentius himself, and consecrated him bishop.

Frumentius returned to Axum as its first bishop, baptized the king, and spread Christianity throughout the land, becoming the founder of the Ethiopian Church. The Ethiopians honoured him with the title 'Abba Salama,' Father of Peace — a name still given to the head of their ancient Church. He died about 383.

A captured boy who became a king's secretary, he brought the Gospel to Ethiopia — which still calls him 'Abba Salama,' Father of Peace.

Image: Unknown authorUnknown author (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/05281b.htm