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DIVISION V

THE COPTIC AND ABYSSINIAN CHURCHES

CHAPTER I

ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF THE COPTIC CHURCH

 

(a) Eusebius; Socrates; Sozomen; Theodoret; Evagrius; John of Ephesus; Cosmas Indicopleustes, Typographie Chretienne (6th century); John of Nikiou, Chronicle (7th century), French trans., 1883; Malan, Documents of the Coptic Church, Eng. trans.

(b) Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chap. xlvii.; Neale, Patriarchate of Alexandria; Hefele, History of the Councils, Eng. trans., vols. iii., iv.; Vlieger, Origin and Early History of the Coptic Church, 1900; Isaak August Dorner, Doctrine of the Person of Christ, Eng. trans., Div. ii. vol. i.; Leipoldt, Schenute von Atripe, 1903.

 

The Coptic Church is the ancient national Church of Egypt, which was separated from the Greek Church in the fifth century because it did not accept the decision of the council of Chalcedon, just as the Syrian Church had been cut off by its refusal to admit the verdict of the council of Ephesus. While the Syrians adhered to Nestorianism, the Copts maintained its extreme opposite—Monophysitism. It is not correct to call them "Jacobites"—the title of the Syrian Christians who hold the same doctrine, because their position is independent of the more Eastern movement, and dates back to an earlier period. The few Egyptian Christians in communion with Constanti-

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