Elesbaan, King of Ethiopia
The Holy and Righteous Elesbaan, King of Ethiopia
Righteous · King · d. c. 555
Commemorated 24 October — Commemorated with the martyrs of Najran whom he avenged
Elesbaan (Kaleb Ella Asbeha), king of Aksum in Ethiopia in the early sixth century, is venerated as a righteous ruler for his defence of the Christians of South Arabia. When the Jewish Himyarite king Dhu Nuwas massacred the Christian city of Najran — the martyrdom of Arethas and his companions — Elesbaan, urged by Byzantium and the Church, crossed the Red Sea about the year 525, overthrew and killed the persecutor, and restored the Christian faith in Himyar. The tradition relates that in the evening of his life he laid aside his crown, sent it to be hung above the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and ended his days as an ascetic recluse. The Church keeps his memory on October 24, the day of the martyrs he avenged.
The Christian king of Aksum
Kaleb Ella Asbeha reigned over the kingdom of Aksum — the great trading power of the Ethiopian highlands and the African shore of the Red Sea — in the first half of the sixth century (his reign is placed roughly 514–542). Aksum had been Christian since the conversion of king Ezana and the mission of Frumentius in the fourth century, and by Kaleb's day it was a confident Christian monarchy in close contact with the churches of Egypt, Syria, and Byzantium and with a natural interest in the Christians across the strait in Himyar, where Aksum had long exercised influence and kept a garrison.
The vengeance for Najran
When the Himyarite king Yusuf, called Dhu Nuwas (Dunaan in the Greek and Slavonic books), seized power and set out to extinguish Christianity in South Arabia — massacring the Aksumite garrison and burning the church at Zafar, and then destroying the Christians of Najran with their chief Arethas about the year 523 — the report of the atrocity reached the Christian world along the trade routes. The emperor Justin I at Constantinople, the patriarch, and the church of Alexandria pressed Elesbaan, as the nearest Christian sovereign, to intervene. The Greek Passion and the Ethiopian tradition alike relate that he prepared his expedition in a spirit of religious duty, seeking the blessing of a holy ascetic who foretold his victory. About the year 525 he crossed the sea with his fleet and army, defeated and slew Dhu Nuwas, and re-established Christianity throughout Himyar, setting a Christian viceroy over the land and rebuilding the church of Najran above the relics of the martyrs. Under the settlement that followed, Himyar remained a Christian client of Aksum, and it was in these years that the church of South Arabia had its brief flowering before the coming of Islam.
Abdication and repose
The tradition remembers Elesbaan above all for the manner of his ending. Having fulfilled the work of vengeance and restoration, he is said to have renounced the height of earthly kingship for the love of Christ: he sent his royal crown to Jerusalem, to be hung as an offering above the tomb of the Lord, and withdrew to a solitary cell on a mountain, where he lived out his life in fasting and prayer as a monk until his repose (placed about 555). It is this crowning renunciation — a king who exchanged, in the words of his kontakion, "a corruptible and passing kingdom for the Kingdom Eternal" — that won him his place among the saints, and the hymns of the day praise not the conqueror but the ascetic who laid the crown down.
Feast and commemoration
October 24 (church date; Old Calendar civil November 6), kept in the Byzantine rite together with the martyrs of Najran whom he avenged. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him (as Elesbaan) on October 27. The Ethiopian Church holds him in especial honour among its own royal saints. He is classed among the righteous — a Christian ruler glorified for his defence of the faith and his ascetic end — rather than as a martyr.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4
Moved by divine zeal to avenge the shed blood of the righteous — as David was anointed by Samuel, so wast thou by the most wondrous Zeno, who prophetically foretold what should come to pass for thee, and by whose blessing, at thy vow to him, thou wast granted victory and triumph over the enemies — and thereafter, laying aside thy kingdom, thou didst finish thy life in the ascetic dwellings of the mountain, O king Elesbaan: entreat Christ the heavenly King to save our souls.
Original translation from the Slavonic
Kontakion — Tone 4
Him who for the love of Christ the King laid aside the height of an earthly kingdom, and the shining crown of crowns, and the purple, and who was gloriously crowned by Him in the heavens — Elesbaan the wise king, who exchanged a corruptible and fleeting kingdom for the Kingdom Eternal — let us praise in songs of hymnody, as a great intercessor for the world.
Original translation from the Slavonic
Iconography
Elesbaan is depicted as a crowned king in imperial or royal dress, often dark of countenance in the older images that mark his Ethiopian origin, holding a cross or a sceptre; in scenes of the commemoration he is shown at the head of his ships or army crossing to Arabia, or set beside the martyrs of Najran whose avenger he was. Later Ethiopian iconography portrays him as a haloed royal saint. No public-domain image of secure identity has yet been stored for this entry.