ḳummuṣ is only a higher title, given (as is that of archimandrite among the Orthodox and Melkites) to priests who are not really abbots at all; or, as we have monsignori, honorary officials of the Pope's court. There is also a special rite for making an Archdeacon,[1] who is a kind of vicar general to the bishop. Both these ranks of ḳummuṣ and the archdeacon are always counted as orders of the hierarchy. There are a few convents of nuns.[2]
Lately there has been a strong movement among the Copts for reform in many directions. The reforming party demand better education for the clergy and a lay right of control in certain matters, particularly in finance. This is undoubtedly due to European, especially to English, influence.[3] The conservative party denounce the reformers as Anglicized Semi-Protestants. American Presbyterians also have been active among the Copts. In 1890 they opened the flourishing Tiufik school, which educates numbers of Coptic boys, but is said to leave them with diminished loyalty towards the national Church. The English Church Missionary Society and an "Association for the furtherance of Christianity in Egypt" have done the same kind of work. The Patriarch is bitterly opposed to these. Forced by their rivalry, he has at last opened a theological school at Cairo, and has even sent two students to the Rhizarion school at
- ↑ Ra'īs shamāmisah.
- ↑ Mrs. Butcher says three only (The Story of the Church of Egypt, ii. p. 411). She gives 418 as the total number of Coptic Churches (ib.). A list of monasteries will be found in Silbernagl: Verfassung, u.s.w. p. 293. There is a Coptic Monastery at Jerusalem, in the Ḥārat anNaṣārā, next to what English tourists call the Pool of Hezekiah.
- ↑ The Church Missionary Society sent Mr. Lieder to Egypt in 1830. Mr. Henry Tattam, an authority on the language, who wrote a Coptic grammar (London, 1830), came in 1838, made friends with the Copts, and wrote a report of their state for the Archbishop of Canterbury. Curzon came in 1833; he wrote an account of what he saw in his Monasteries of the Levant. A Mr. T. Grimshawe came in 1839. All these persons worked for the enlightenment, but also, it would seem, for the Protestantizing of the Copts. Tattam edited a book of Gospels in Coptic and Arabic; Lieder opened a school, which had to be closed in 1848 because of the hostility of the Patriarch. These gentlemen and the Church Missionary Society have rather spoiled the field for High Church missionary effort. It has been proposed that the Archbishop of York should do for the Copts what Canterbury is doing for the Nestorians. But the Copts understand more about the state of the Church of England than do the Nestorians, and they are suspicious of what High Churchmen tell them about Anglicanism.
