Narrative
The Life and Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros
Gädlä Wälättä Petros
Galawdewos · 1672
Synopsis
Born into the nobility and married to Mälkəʾä Krəstos, counsellor to King Susənyos, Wälättä Petros leaves her husband when the court turns to the Catholicism of the Jesuits. Having become a nun, she preaches against the foreign faith and stands up to its supporters, then founds one community after another around Lake Tana, with the nun Ǝḫətä Krəstos at her side. The narrative mingles the daily life of these communities with miracles.
Context
The text was written around 1672, some thirty years after the death of the saint, in the genre of the gädl, the saint's life in Ge'ez; Wälättä Petros is one of the few Ethiopian women saints to have one. It draws on the memories of the monks, so much so that Philip Jenkins reads it as a collective oral history. Carlo Conti Rossini edited it in 1912 from a single manuscript; Lanfranco Ricci translated it into Italian in 1970, then Wendy Laura Belcher and Michael Kleiner into English in 2015, from twelve manuscripts.
Who it is for
For discovering seventeenth-century Ethiopia through the portrait of a resisting nun, readable in English.
Prizes and reception
Princeton University Press presents the translation as that of the earliest known biography of an African woman.
Sources for this page 5
The pages consulted to check this page.