As one flips through the folios of an Ethiopian manuscript one will note the degree of veneration the Ethiopian Church reserves for Mary, the Mother of Christ. And one need not be an Ethiopian scholar to note the revered status of Mary. Ethiopian manuscripts are replete with hand drawn and painted icons (or more precisely, miniatures) depicting various Saints. Far and away the most common subject of these miniatures is Mary. Just as in the other Orthodox traditions, the Ethiopian Church embraces certain motifs or forms for depicting Mary. The most common form is Mary and the Child Jesus. This is what the Byzantines would call the Icon of the Theotokos. It depicts Mary sitting with Jesus as a child sitting on her lap. The variations that exist in this general form are particularly interesting. One finds Mary depicted in everything from ornate and colorful paintings to crude ink sketches included in the manuscripts.
Curiously, the Ethiopians hold Mary in tension between divine and human. Traditionally, Mary may be seen Crowned in Heaven and breast-feeding Jesus the Child. In one sense she transcends her humanity to inhabit heaven as royalty.
And in another sense she is confined to a visceral existence that feeds the Son of God.
In this tension one finds Christ, the Son of God, helpless, being fed at the breast of a woman. Nowhere in Christian history is the mystery of the the nature of Christ depicted so pointedly. God becomes human and humanity is glorified.
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