Divine kingship and Afro-Byzantine political theology through syncretism: Intersections of faith, power, and art in Nubia and Ethiopia

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This article examines how Byzantine political theology was transmitted and transformed within African Christian kingdoms of Nubia and Ethiopia particularly through religious art. Drawing on theological concepts such as taxis (order of the Nature) and oikonomia (divine management), the study explores how African rulers appropriated and adapted politically Byzantine models of divine kingship while embedding them in local traditions of authority. Including syncretic continuities with older African kingship practices, social interaction embodied personal worth, and authority of a monarch with presumed qualities and abilities society expects them to possess, defined as charisma. Texts in Ge´ez, such as the religious epic story Kebra Negast and the legal code Fetha Negast (fourteenth century) illustrate the interweaving of biblical, Roman-Byzantine, and Ethiopian theological–political thought, while iconographic traditions in Faras and Aksum reveal how art functioned as a medium of divine legitimation and as a visual enactment of the protector–protected relationship central to Afro-Byzantine kingship. Drawing on a combined historical, politico-cultural and artistic methodological approach, the article argues that Afro-Byzantine political theology was not a submissive, passive imitation of imperial ideology but an active creative synthesis that combined Christian universality with African specificity. Foregrounding a process of syncretism, the study highlights divine protection, sacred kingship, legalised hegemonic authority as well how African Christianity contributed to the global history of Christian political thought. This comparative perspective advances scholarship by reframing Africa as an active site of theological, political and artistic development through social acculturation and syncretic spirituality.

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