Ezana

Ezana was king of Axum in the fourth century, reigning from the 320s to about 360. He came to the throne as a child, and his mother Sofya ruled as regent until he came of age. The story of his conversion is bound up with Saint Frumentius, his Syrian tutor, who later became head of the Ethiopian Church. Frumentius brought the king to Christianity, probably between 341 and 346.

The change can be seen on his coins: the earlier ones bear the disc and crescent, the later ones the cross. The inscriptions of the last part of his reign are no longer dedicated to the god of war but to the Lord of heaven and earth. Ezana also made war, as his stelae at Axum record, and a letter from the emperor Constantius II is addressed to him and to his brother Saizana, asking that Frumentius be sent to Alexandria to be examined.

He is venerated as a saint in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, which belongs to Oriental Orthodoxy, and in the Catholic Church, on 1 October and 27 October. This is not a synodal canonization of the Chalcedonian Orthodox Churches.