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CHAPTER III

THE COPTS UNDER THE CALIPHATE

 

(a) The Arabian authors; John of Nikiou, Chronicle; Makrizi; Eutychius; Amelineau, Étude sur le Christianisme au Égypte au Septième Siècle (containing translation of Life of Abbot Pisentius); Renaudot, Historia Patriarcharum Alexandrinorum; Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, 1741; Abu Salik, The Churches and Monasteries of Egypt (died a.d. 900; Eng. trans. 1895).

(b) Gibbon, chap. li.; Neale, Patriarchate of Alexandria; Mrs. Butcher, History of the Church in Egypt, 1897; Lane Poole, Hist. of Egypt in the Middle Ages, 1907.

 

The Coptic monks of this period, first harried by the Persians, next persecuted by the Melchites, and then oppressed by the Arabs, were now at their highest stage of culture. The mission of scholars from Syria to an Egyptian monastery for the revision of their own Scriptures is one sign of this fact. It seems clear that the Melchites studied the Greek classics as well as the Church Fathers. This is shown by classical allusions in their writings. How far these studies were shared by the Copts, however, is not quite evident. But under the liberal rule of John the Almoner there was more friendly communication between the two churches than at any other time either before or after. Sophronius, the orthodox opponent of the Ecthesis, came from Alexandria, and he composed an elegy on the Holy Places in Anacreontic verse,—but of course he was a Melchite. A friend of John the Almoner and Sophronius, John Moschus, gives an account of his visits to Egyptian monasteries in a famous book, entitled Spiritual Pastures.^[1]

1. Δειμὼν πνευματικός.

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