persecution. With every change of masters they have hoped for better times; but whether under Arab, Kurd, or Turk, the Christians have always been the sufferers from each new invasion and fresh conquest of Egypt, in additional exactions, restrictions, wrongs, and insults. This went on until modern Europe interfered with Egyptian affairs, and, last of all, England brought equal justice to all classes and freedom in religion for all faiths.
Turning to the internal characteristics of the Egyptian Church, we may observe how in patristic times Alexandria and the Delta, the cultivated north, were marked by liberalism both in polity and in doctrine. The sacerdotal and episcopal claims of Catholicism were slower to make themselves felt here than in any other Church. Eutychius, a patriarch of Alexandria in the tenth century, records a very significant tradition throwing light on primitive times. He states that "St. Mark along with Ananias"—who is reckoned St. Mark's successor in the "episcopate"—"ordained twelve presbyters to remain with the patriarch; so that when the patriarchate should become vacant they might elect one out of the twelve, on whose head the other eleven should lay their hands, and give him benediction and constitute him patriarch."[1] After citing this statement, Neale adds that "so monstrous a story" would lead us to think the author a fabricator but for St. Jerome, who says that "at Alexandria till the middle of the third century the presbyters nominated and elected from among themselves to the higher dignity of bishop,"[2] He attempts to save the situation by advancing the alternative explanations, that either this was only an election by the presbyters, not a consecration, or the twelve must have constitued an "episcopal college."[3] Both of these hypotheses are purely conjectural. They imply a regularity of episcopal ordination that was not enforced in early times. Bishop Wordsworth has shown that presbyterian ordination
- ↑ Annales in Migne, tome iii. p. 982.
- ↑ Epist. 146.
- ↑ Opus cit. p. 11.
