2009/05/13 by Wendy Laura Belcher · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #African history and culture analysis #Classical Studies and Philology #Byzantine Studies and History #Emperor #Honour #Throne #Portrait #Classics #Faith #Character (mathematics) #History #Tribute #Apostle #Literature #Ancient history #Philosophy #Art #Theology #Art history #Law #Archaeology #Politics
paper · doi:10.1093/notesj/gjp007
openalex publication_date 2009/05/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/03/03
IT has long been asserted that Samuel Johnson came to name the titular character of Rasselas in honour of an Ethiopian warrior named Ras Sela Christos who appeared in the book Johnson translated as a young man, A Voyage to Abyssinia. ‘Ras’ is the Ethiopic word for ‘prince’; ‘Sela Christos’ means ‘Portrait of Christ’. James Bruce was perhaps the first to argue that this warrior was the inspiration for the name, accusing Johnson of making a ‘blunder in oriental philology’1 by following the Portuguese practice of mistakenly collapsing honorary titles with proper names, for they sometimes called the warrior ‘Rassela Christos’. Later scholars have come to assume that the name of and the model for Johnson's melancholy prince is indeed Sela Christos. For instance, Thomas M. Curley wrote that Johnson chose Sela Christos as his model because the warrior was ‘a hotheaded defender of Emperor Segued and the Roman Catholic faith’ who ‘secured the throne for [the Ethiopian emperor] Segued by his astute military leadership’ and later ‘died under Segued's anti-Catholic successor’.2 The linguistic similarity of the names Rasselas and Sela Christos have allowed such assertions to continue.