Pedro Páez in his History of Ethiopia seems to write that, in his travels throughout the country, there was no person familiar with any such Order and that it was an invented fable.

[2] Mentioned more in Western sources than Ethiopian ones, it is speculated that it might have originally been a monastic order following Saint Anthony the Great, rather than a European-style chivalric order, but was perceived as such by medieval Western as the latter, who in turn re-imported their misconception into Ethiopia in the late Middle Ages, where it was adopted and purportedly awarded by both the Emperor and the Abuna of the Tewahedo Church.

[3] There are several references to the order in European texts in the Early modern period, some deeming it fraudulent and others recognising it as a powerful monastic order with thousands of members and a chapter house "in every town" of the country, a very unusual occurrence in a period where what little Westerners "knew" about Ethiopia, such as its "ruler" Prester John, was generally wildly inaccurate.

[4] In 1632, one Balthasar Giron, who purported he was "an Abyssinian", in Rome claimed he possessed the "ancient order" of "St. Anthony of Ethiopia", until he was exposed as a fraud by the Maronite scholar Abraham Echelensis.

There does not appear to be any mention of the order until it was notionally revived by the Ethiopian monarchy-in-exile after 1987, and is today awarded by the Crown Council of Ethiopia.