The Conversion of the Nubian Kingdoms

Beyond the Thebaid, outside the Roman empire, John of Ephesus knows three peoples: the Nobadae on the border of Egypt, the Alodaei beyond them, and the Makoritae in between (John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History 3.4.6) (John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History 3.4.50–51). He tells how the first and the last became Christian. John was a bishop of the party that rejected Chalcedon; he was at Constantinople and met the Nubian envoys there (John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History 3.4.8), and he writes as a partisan of that side.

As John tells it, Julian, an old priest in the household of Theodosius, the exiled patriarch of Alexandria, wished to convert the Nobadae and told the empress Theodora. She told Justinian I, who, on learning that Julian opposed the council, sent an embassy of his own with gold and baptismal robes. Theodora then wrote to the duke of the Thebaid that he would answer with his head if the emperor’s envoy arrived before hers. The duke kept the emperor’s man waiting for transport until Julian had passed (John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History 3.4.6). The king of the Nobadae, John continues, received Julian, and he and his nobles renounced their old worship. When the emperor’s envoy arrived they accepted his gifts and refused his faith, saying that they would follow Theodosius. Julian stayed two years, baptised the king, his nobles and many people, and left them in the care of Theodore, the aged bishop of Philae (John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History 3.4.7) (John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History 3.4.49).

About eighteen years later, John says, the bishop Longinus reached them (John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History 3.4.49). Theodora and Theodosius had chosen him for the Nobadae and he was consecrated at the patriarch’s death, but the emperor of the day had him held for three years, until he escaped in disguise. He taught the Nobadae afresh, built a church and ordained clergy. Their envoy told the court, in John’s hearing, that they had not known what Christianity was until Longinus came (John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History 3.4.8).

The king of the Alodaei, John goes on, then asked for him. Rival bishops sent from Alexandria were turned away, and the king of the Makoritae set watchers on the roads to stop him (John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History 3.4.50–51). Longinus got through, and in a letter that John quotes he reports that he baptised the king, his nobles and his household. The king of the Alodaei wrote to thank the king of the Nobadae, and John dates these things to the year 891 of the Greeks, which is 579–580 (John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History 3.4.52–53).

In the chapters cited here John does not tell of the conversion of the middle kingdom. A notice from the other end of the Mediterranean may concern it. The Latin chronicler John of Biclaro notes under the third year of Justin II that the people of the “Maccurritae” received the faith of Christ, and four years later that their envoys brought elephant tusks and a giraffe to Constantinople (John of Biclaro, Chronicle third year of Justin (Mommsen, p. 212)) (John of Biclaro, Chronicle seventh year of Justin (Mommsen, p. 213)). He does not say where they lived. The name is close to that of the Makoritae of John of Ephesus; Mommsen, who edited the chronicle, took them instead for a people in Mauretania (John of Biclaro, Chronicle third year of Justin (Mommsen, p. 212)). The Pleiades gazetteer gives Old Dongola as the capital of the Nubian kingdom of Makuria (Pleiades 865674318). At Faras, a large town of Nobadia, excavators found a cathedral of the eighth century with its wall paintings (Faras Gallery, National Museum in Warsaw).