Ethiopian Christianity is the oldest continuous national church outside the Middle East — Ezana of Aksum converted around 330, before Rome's empire was formally Christian — and Tekle Haymanot is its central native saint. The details are frankly legendary and are told as such: the leg that failed after seven years standing in prayer, the six wings given in compensation, the flight round Debre Damo when the rope broke. What is historical is that he founded the house that became Debre Libanos in 1284, that its network of daughter monasteries evangelised the Ethiopian highlands, and that its abbot, the Echege, became the highest-ranking Ethiopian churchman at a time when the Abuna was by custom an Egyptian Copt sent from Alexandria — an arrangement that lasted until 1959. His feast on 24 Nehasse is a major national day, and his image, one-legged and winged, is on church walls and painted parchments across the country and in every Ethiopian diaspora parish.