All Copts obey their one Patriarch (of Alexandria). In theory they admit seven Patriarchs, four greater ones, of Rome,[1] Alexandria,[2] Antioch, and Ephesus, which they count as transferred to Constantinople, and three lesser, merely titular, ones: Jerusalem, Seleucia-Ctesiphon, and Abyssinia.[3] But of these, all, except Alexandria, Antioch (of course the Jacobite see) and Abyssinia, have fallen into Dyophysism and the wicked heresies of Chalcedon; so they are separated from the true Monophysite Church. The Coptic Patriarch is elected by the twelve bishops who form his court. He is always a monk, generally abbot of one of the chief monasteries. He may not already be a bishop. The Copts keep the old law which forbids the transference of a bishop from one see to another. He must be celibate, the son of a father who was his wife's first husband. He must be a native Egyptian, and at least fifty years old. What happened in practice till quite lately was that the monks of a chief monastery proposed someone (usually their abbot) and the bishops elected him. Often there was only one candidate. The Patriarch had to lead an exceedingly abstemious life; so the dignity was not much coveted. Indeed, one hears of the elect being seized by force and chained up in Cairo till they ordained him. The election was made by lot. The names were written on slips; a slip was added inscribed
- ↑ It is perhaps hardly worth noticing that every Eastern Church, as a matter of course, acknowledges the Pope as first Patriarch and chief bishop in Christendom, and also as Patriarch having lawful jurisdiction over all the West. The idea, which one sometimes hears from Anglicans, that all bishops are equal, is unknown to any ancient Church. They all have the most definite idea of a graduated hierarchy among bishops; Metropolitans, Exarchs, and Patriarchs lord it over their suffragans, generally tyrannically. They are not really far from our concept of the Papacy. They have only to add that the chief Patriarch has jurisdiction over the other Patriarchs, as these have over Metropolitans, as Metropolitans have over simple bishops. The Anglican who thinks that he makes a great concession by admitting that the Pope is the chief bishop in Italy is as ludicrously far from any concept of the Eastern Churches, or of antiquity, as the Presbyterian who is prepared to concede that a bishop is the chief clergyman in larger towns. The standard of agreement of all so-called branches of the Church gives the Pope a position which would surprise most Anglicans. Notably it gives him jurisdiction over England.
- ↑ They keep the old order, which was the rule before Chalcedon, counting the Alexandrine See as second after Rome (Orth. Eastern Church, pp. 9, 42, 50, etc.).
- ↑ Vansleb: op. cit. pp. 9-10; Silbernagl: Verfassung, u.s.w. p. 278.
