bishoprics. Cyril ordained forty bishops, and accumulated a very considerable sum of money by means of the large fees he exacted from them. At length he was arrested on charges of malversation of funds and sent to Cairo. The bishops now proposed terms to him. He should give up the practice of simony, and have his authority limited in several directions; but he was liberated by favour of the sultan without agreeing to these terms. Subsequently, since fresh complaints were brought forward, fourteen bishops of Lower Egypt met at Cairo and induced him to consent to a number of reforms, among which was the requirement that the consecration of bishops and priests should be performed free of charge. But the quarrel went on. Cyril was repeatedly accused to the sultan and repeatedly fined. Yet so great was the influence of his office that he was able to raise all the funds requisite to satisfy the government. He held the control of the mighty engine of ordination. If he refused to ordain bishops the episcopate would die out, and with it the priesthood, and with that the Church itself. The sacerdotal system derived all its authority primarily from the patriarch. When religion depends on the sacraments, the sacraments on the priests, the priests on the bishops, and the bishops on the patriarch—without whose concurrence their ordination is uncanonical, this supreme prelate holds the key of the situation. He can exact his own terms before consenting to ordain. Thus he can obtain sufficient money to bribe the civil authority when that authority, the only power above him, is invoked to interfere with his tyrannical practices. In this way Cyril was able to continue his disgraceful practices till his death relieved the Copts of the incubus of his patriarchal rule (a.d. 1243).
The subsequent story of the Coptic Church becomes less and less interesting, except at one or two points, where its monotony is broken by the emergence of a striking personality or by the occurrence of events in the outer world. The original sources for the history are here very meagre, so that we have not materials from which to come
