Knights Templar & Ethiopia
from "Ethiopia Reaches Her Hand Unto God" by Gregory Copley, pp. 92-94
Published by Defence & foreign Affairs USA, 1998

The first group in the Western European milieu to adapt bages and symbols as a formalized aspect of their attire -- the Knights Templar of the Christian Crusades -- appeared in Ethiopia during the 12th century. They were in seach of the lost Ark of Covenant, which they found was not where they had been searching; in the ruins of the Temple of Jerusalem. It had gone by a long route to Axum, in Ethiopia, a fact which thcy had discovered as they pursued clues to its flight from Israel.

The Knights Templar, famous for their building, left their legacy in Ethiopia, where they may have either contributed to the construction of such fabled rock churches such as St. George's in Lalibela (created around 1270) [see Section 1, Chapter 2], or acquired some of the designs from Ethiopia. But the Templars also left a more ephemeral symbol: the red cloth signs of the crucifix which they wore on their white surpluses to identify their knight-priest order. This was among the first highly-charged and uniform badge of office and knighthood known to the modern world. And, to a society such as Ethiopia's, a bastion of Christianity, the image of the badge of office would not be lost.

Similarly, the later Portuguese visitors brought evidence of other Western trappings of office, and the colour purple was introduced into the retinue of the Court [see Section i,Chapter 21.

But by the time the Portuguese visited Ethiopia, the Christian concept of identifiable chivalric orders had already been inculcated in a Western sense, almost certainly because of the contact with the visiting Knights Templar. However, Ethiopia's indigenous Order of St. Anthony is believed to be one of the oldest orders of chivalry in the world. It was founded as a religious Order of Knighthood by "Prestor lohn"2 - possibly a king John - in the year 370. It developed along purely local cultural lines for the defence of Christianity and the Christian king.

An Order of the same name later existed in Italy, France and Spain, having originated in Constantinople. The object of both Orders was the defence of the Christian faith. The knights (apparently of the European and Ethiopian orders, but certainly the European) wore a black gown lined with blue, having a blue cross fixed to the breast comprised of three arms. It is said that the senior Knights wore a double cross of the same coloun[3]

It would be unfair to say that the place of Ethiopia's monarchy in the historical framework of the geopolitics of the past two millennia (or at least untill the late 1800s) derives, however, solely from the contacts which the country maintained with the Knights Templar, the Portuguese visitors and such Jame Bruce.

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2 "Prestor John" is a name which was devised in Western Europe arid was applied over many centuries to rulers of "the East' At various times, this was taken to mean some mythical Christian king somewhere in India, or an unspecified Eastern khanate. Finally, with the Western discovery of the Ethiopian Christian Kingdom, the name was applied to Ethiopia, where the western appellation remained.
[3] Neville, D.C.: A History of the Early Orders of Knighthood and Chivalry. Limpsfield, Surrey, 1978.