Holy War: The Untold Story of Catholic Italy's Crusade Against the Ethiopian Orthodox Church

In 2016 the American Pew Research Center found that Ethiopians, consisting overwhelmingly of Christians and Muslims, are the most religious people in the world. This is not altogether surprising, given that it is generally agreed by scholars that by the year 340 the emperor of Ethiopia had declared Christianity the state religion, making Ethiopia the second country in the world to do so, after Armenia. It would be almost another half-century before the Roman Empire followed suit. Moreover, Ethiopia was the first country in the world to mint coins bearing the Christian cross, and with an unbroken record of continuity to the present day, the Ethiopian Church remains one of the world’s most ancient and venerable national Churches. Ethiopia also traces its encounters with Islam back to the earliest times; the Prophet Muhammad advised his followers to escape persecution at Mecca by going to Ethiopia, where there was ‘a king under whom none are persecuted. It is a land of righteousness where God will give you relief from what you are suffering.’