Debre Bizen is an Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church monastery. Located at the top of Debre Bizen the mountain (2460 meters) near the town of Nefasit in Eritrea. Its library contains many important Ge'ez manuscripts.
History
Debre Bizen was founded in the 1350s by Filipos, who was a student of Absadi. By 1400, the Monastery followed the rule of the House of Ewostatewos ( Eustáthios), and a gadl (hagiography) of Ewostatewos was later composed there. According to Tom Killion, it remained independent of the Ethiopian Church, while Richard Pankhurst states that it continued to be dependent on the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church centered in Axum.Pankhurst, The Ethiopian Borderlands, p. 37 In either case, a charter survives of the Emperor Zara Yaqob in which he granted lands to Debre Bizen.George Wynn Brereton Huntingford, The historical geography of Ethiopia from the first century AD to 1704, (Oxford University Press: 1989), p. 103
The monastery was one of several habitations damaged by the Ottoman Empire in their campaigns to establish their province of Habesh Eyalet in the 16th century.Pankhurst, The Ethiopian Borderlands, p. 234
When Abuna Yohannes XIV, who came from Cairo to Eritrea to serve as head of the Eritrean/ Ethiopian Church, was held for ransom at Arkiko by the local naib, the abbot of Debre Bizen helped him to escape.Richard R.K. Pankhurst, The Ethiopian Royal Chronicles (Oxford: Addis Ababa, 1967), pp. 125-9.
See also List of Eritrean Orthodox monasteries
References
Further reading Roger Schneider, "Notes sur Filpos de Dabra Bizan et ses successeurs", Annales d'Ethiopie, 11 (1978), pp. 135–139