Dr. David Daniels' Lecture:
African Christians and the 16th Century Reformation
7 July 1534
Luther’s Letter about Michael the Deacon, an Ethiopian cleric
There has been with us in Germany, the Reverend Michael the Ethiopian, a Deacon. Conversing privately with him concerning Christian doctrine, we have heard that he properly agrees with the Symbol which the Western Church holds, and that he does not think differently about the Trinity than what the Western Church thinks. Therefore we commend him to good people as much as we surely can. For, although the Eastern Church has several dissimilar ceremonies, he judges that their dissimilarity does not nullify the unity of the church and does not militate against the faith, since the kingdom of Christ is the spiritual righteousness of the heart, the fear of God, and confidence through Christ. We also think this opinion is right. We have also learned from him, that the rite which we observe in the use of administration of the Lord’s Supper and the Mass, agrees with the Eastern Church. We wish, moreover, that all peoples would acknowledge and glorify Christ, and would submit to Him with true confidence in His mercy and with love for one’s neighbor. For this reason we ask that good people would demonstrate Christian love also to this visitor.
Dated at Wittenberg in the year 1534, the 7th of July. Martin Luther. (translated by Donald D. Schoewe; translation revised by Mark DeGarmeaux)
Also see a translation of Luther’s Letter on the Michael the Deacon in "Luther and the Ethiopian Deacon" by David D. Daniels III and Lawrence Anglin
Lutheran Quarterly (Winter 2018)
March 1546
Cardinal Marcello Cervini to Paul III’s secretary from Council of Trent
“I would like you to have the Indian [Ethiopian] and Maronite masses translated, to see if those provinces, converted by different apostles, have the same substance we have in terms of sacrifice, the intercession of saints and the prayers for the dead. If I remember correctly brother Peter…told me they [Ethiopians] have in the mass all these things. When we will deal [with these matters], it will be better to be informed.”
c1548
Tasfa Seyon, an Ethiopian cleric, “Preface to Paul III” in the Ethiopian Baptismal Rite
Ethiopians “are and want to be Catholics [are] judged to be schismatic by almost all Europeans…. Accept us as sons of the church, and them [the critical European] know through you that none of us shrink back from the Roman Church, but rather that we embrace and revere it as the mother of all churches.”
See The African Prester John and the Birth of Ethiopian-European Relations, 1402-1555
By Matteo Salvadore (2016), 93