ABSTRACT

As the protagonists of royal chronicles and hagiographical texts, the king and the saint are, in their most extreme characterizations, two separate entities. They represent two worlds that appear extremely distant from each other. There is however an entire series of intermediate degrees, consisting in characters and situations, which eventually bring the two increasingly closer to each other. The imperceptible fading of the two extremes makes it increasingly difficult to distinguish the threshold between factual history and ideology and also warns us as to what we should really consider as 'history'. Historical texts and their protagonist, the king, and hagiographical texts and their protagonist, the saint, cannot be confused in their extreme characterizations. One could identify more elements of Ethiopian kingship which find parallels in hagiography, and which aid historians of the Near East either by similitude or by contrast.