Coming Near to the Ethiopian Church

As a recent convert to Eastern Orthodoxy (Orthodox Church in America), I find the similarities between the Byzantine aesthetic and the Coptic/Ethiopian aesthetic striking. The differences really amount to variations in the folk sensibilities of the respective traditions. The iconongraphy of the Ethiopian church has fewer formal limitations than the Russian Byzantine 

forms that I venerate in my own parish. The Oriental Churches (Armenian, Coptic, Syriac, Ethiopian, and Indian), are less influenced by Greek Classicism than the Byzantine Eastern Churches. I appreciate the loyalty to form found in the Eastern Churches but I greatly admire the leeway available to the Oriental Churches and what it adds to the aesthetic of their traditions. 

Holy Tradition elevates martyrs to a high degree of adoration. The difference between the manner in which Eastern and Oriental churches choose to remember their martyrs exemplifies these aesthetic variations. Speaking for the traditions with which I am most familiar, the Russian religious aesthetic reflects a higher degree of piety than that of the Ethiopians. As brutal as Russian history is, the Russian Church reflects a more refined, European sensibility when it comes to visual depictions of Christian martyrs. Likewise, Ethiopian history is a story of horrible brutality and suffering. Ethiopians, however, identify closely with the suffering of martyrs and, whether consciously or unconsciously, value suffering enough to canonize the sickeningly real images of suffering. Take the following examples from canonical materials of the Ethiopian Church:

The Slaughter of the Innocents 

The beheading of a martyr. 

One would be hard-pressed to find any Church-sanctioned art this visceral in any Eastern Orthodox tradition. I am told that these types of depictions exist in the Coptic and Armenian traditions but I have not searched them out for myself. Despite the differences in their aesthetic sensibilities, all of the points of convergence between the Russian and Ethiopian liturgies and feasts compel me to see them as one and the same Church. It is difficult for me to view the above images and not feel disgusted by their all-too-real depictions. When I hear the stories of saints who have been martyred my imagination is rapt by the abject reality of what it means to die for ones faith. And the Ethiopian Church has moored my imagination to reality. As I cling more tightly to Russian Orthodoxy I am coming near to the Ethiopian Church and I love it all the more.