The Order of St Anthony of Ethiopia
A fabled African fighting order thought to date from late antiquity through to the modern age. Not to be confused with the Order of St Anthony.
Summary
The Order of St Anthony is described in some detail in Hugh Clark's A Concise History of Knighthood Containing the Religious and Military Orders (London, 1784):
John, Emperor of Еthiopia (vulgarly called Рrester John), in the year 370, erected into a religious Оrder of Knighthood certain mоnks who lived an austere life in the desert, after the example of St. Anthony. Не granted these Knights many privileges and revenues. They received the rule of St. Вasil, wore a black garment, and for their ensign a blue cross edged with gold in form of the letter Т. Their chief seat was in the Isle of Меrse, where the Abbots both spiritual and temporal resided. In other parts of Ethiopia they had many monasteries and convents, with about two millions yearly revenue.
Тhese Knights vow to defend the Christian religion; to yield obedience to their superiors, observe conjugal chastity; not to marry or receive any other Ноly Orders without licence first obtained from the Abbot; they are to guard the confines of the Empire; and to go to war when and where they are commanded.
Тhe ancient monastery of St. Anthony is situated in the deserts of Thebes, near some mountains where that famed hermit lived and died. This edifice is surrounded with an oval wall, about five hundred paces in circumference, and near forty feet high, to keep out the plundering Arabs. Тhe pilgrims and other visitors are drawn up into it by a rope let down from a kind of watch-house on the top of a wall, and a crane turned by the Мonks within the enclosure.
The cells of this monastery, which amounted formerly to more than three hundred, are now reduced to about forty, the rest being a heap of ruins. These cells are more like sepulchral vaults than chambers, being most of them пot above four fect high, five wide, and seven in length. Веsides these cells, they have a common hall, a kitchen, and a strong tower, where they keep their provisions, of which they commonly lay up a stock sufficient for two years. The door that leads into it is plated with iron, and is entered by means of a draw-bridge from a lower tower over against it; and hither the Monks retire when they are closely befieged by the Arabs.
Вut the greatest curiolity of the place is a subterraneous passage about fifty paces long, which leads to a rock without the walls, from whence issues a stream of excellent water, sufficient for all the uses of the monastery, and serving to water their little garden, which is stored with variety of herbs and fruits. The beds of the Мonks are sheep-skins spread upon mats, and a bundle of rushes serves them for a pillow. Their drink is water, and their food is chiefly the product of their garden.
Historical Basis
It's thought that the Order of St Anthony of Ethiopia, if it ever existed, may have been a monastic order rather than a fighting order.
In 1987 the Ethiopian monarchy-in-exile instituted the Order of St Anthony as an award, primarily to clerics and academics. It has two grades: the Knight Grand Cross and the Companion. It has no direct link with the purported medieval order other than the name.
Spread
Stories of a medieval Ethiopian fighting order circulated widely in early modern Europe. The legend was common enough that the Jesuit priest looked without success for evidence of for the order on his mission to Ethiopia from 1589 to his death in 1622.
English priest Samuel Purchas wrote about the order in 1625 in Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes, a 20-volume collection of travellers' tales.
In 1632 a Balthazar Giron appeared in Rome claiming to be an Abyssinian member of the ancient order of St Anthony of Ethiopia; in 1646 he was exposed as a fraud by the Syrian Maronite scholar Abraham Echelensis.
Sources:
Hugh Clark, A Concise History of Knighthood Containing the Religious and Military Orders (London, 1784)
The Order of St Anthony (Ethiopia) on Wikipedia
The Military Orders in The New Catholic Encyclopedia
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