The Ethiopian literary tradition extends over a time frame beginning even before the
christianization of the Country (first half of the 4th cent.) up to modern times. In this
long period we frequently register phenomena of interference both among different
languages (Greek, Gǝ‘ǝz, Arabic, Amharic, agaw languages and so on) and between
various registers of the same language, produced or conditioned by specific cultural or
religious contexts. Particularly, in the Middle Ages the differentiation between Gǝ‘ǝz as
the language of the clergy and the written discourse, and Amharic as the language of
the court and the verbal communication, had momentous reflexes on the traditional
teaching, related to Gǝ‘ǝz liturgical texts, but orally transmitted in Amharic. This development
proved to be crucial for the start of the literarization process of Amharic,
to be dated back to the second half of the 16th cent., as an effect of the missionary
propaganda of the Portuguese Jesuits and of their polemics against the Ethiopian
Orthodox clergy
