hagiography in Coptic

© Copyrighted Material


www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

11

Hagiography in Coptic1

Arietta Papaconstantinou

Coptic hagiography has suffered from a bad reputation ever since 1922 when Hippolyte Delehaye, in an otherwise outstanding article, spoke of ‘the artificial character of this wretched literature’, which in his eyes defies both history and common sense, and ‘bears witness to an inferior level of culture and a profound poverty of thought’.2 Although nobody would use such terms today, the ‘extravagance’ and ‘absurdity’ of the situations narrated have often been noted, and seem to have become for many the defining features of that literature.3 However, this image is founded only on a specific group of rather late martyrologies, which can by no means stand as representative of all hagiography in Coptic.

Hagiographical texts make up a substantial part of extant Coptic literature. With few exceptions, they were composed between the fourth and the eighth centuries, and are preserved in manuscripts dating between the ninth and the thirteenth centuries. Some are translations from the Greek, others were composed directly in Coptic. Many are lost in their original version and are only known through translations into Arabic or Ethiopic, several of which can be found respectively in the Copto-Arabic and the Ethiopic Synaxarion, often in abridged versions.4 Inventories of libraries dating back to the eighth and ninth centuries also mention a number of

1 Coptic hagiography’ would have been slightly ambiguous, since ‘Coptic’ can refer both to the language and to a cultural entity which encompasses texts in other languages, especially Arabic (on this question, see Orlandi, ‘Letteratura copta’, 44–5 and the references there). This survey will present various issues raised by Coptic hagiographical texts from a historical rather than a literary point of view. It is not meant to be an exhaustive list of vitae and martyrologies, access to which can be gained through the references cited in section (c) of the Bibliography. Transcriptions of place names are from the Coptic form, but the Greek and Arabic equivalents are given, for it is often they that appear in dictionaries and encyclopaedias.

2 Delehaye, ‘Les martyrs d’Égypte’, 148.3 See, for instance, Reymond and Barns, Four Martyrdoms, 2.4 There are two editions of the Copto-Arabic Synaxarion, neither of which is entirely

satisfactory: see the comments in Coquin, ‘Le synaxaire’; Coquin, ‘Synaxarion’; and Colin, ‘Le synaxaire éthiopien’, 277–83. On the question of translations of the Ethiopic Synaxarion,



www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography

324

texts of which no trace is left today.5 The loss of yet more texts can be inferred from the fact that inscriptions and papyri mention a number of saints about whose lives and deeds there must have existed at least a minimal narrative.6 Although many texts still remain to be edited, it is clear that what survives today is but a small part of the hagiography produced in Egypt during late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. The majority of the texts are written in the Sahidic (southern) dialect, which dominated literary production until after the Arab conquest. Eventually, however, the Bohairic dialect (from the North) survived longer, partly because of its use in the liturgy at a time when Coptic was no longer the everyday language, and several texts are extant in this dialect too.

To some extent, the linguistic separation of hagiographical texts circulating within the same country is artificial. One could simply speak of ‘Egyptian hagiography’, including all the relevant texts in a single study. However, the linguistic question was not entirely neutral. The choice of writing in one or the other language within a bilingual society was a statement of cultural allegiance that must be taken into account – it is more the result of choice than of necessity. In this respect, translations function more as a form of appropriation than as a sign that the original language was no longer understood. Texts in Coptic were composed for two and a half centuries while Greek was commonly used all over the country; and when Christian authors of the tenth century began writing in Arabic, Coptic was still used and understood by members of their community. In this sense, it is legitimate to speak of hagiography in Coptic alone, with the implicit idea that the choice of that language was meaningful to those who made it.7

Most works in Coptic fall into the basic categories also found in Greek hagiography: vitae, acts of martyrs, ‘epic’ martyrologies, collections of miracles and homilies in honour of saints. This led Delehaye to the conclusion that Coptic hagiography was entirely dependent on the principles set out by Greek hagiographical schools, an idea embraced by subsequent scholars.8 However, although Greek rhetoric and narrative techniques evidently served as models for Coptic authors, who had been trained in schools with centuries of paideia tradition behind them, several scholars have also insisted on the indigenous elements of Coptic literature and its relation to local literary forms.9 It has even been suggested

see the classic article by Peeters, ‘Traductions et traducteurs’, which does, however, display great contempt for both the Coptic language and its literature (see e.g. 243).

5 See Coquin, ‘Le catalogue’, 230–37 and Papaconstantinou, Culte des saints, 381–2.6 A list of saints found only in documentary sources in Papaconstantinou, Culte des

saints, 232 n. 8.7 For a recent treatment of questions of language choice and the chronology of the use

of Coptic, see Papaconstantinou, ‘Dioscore et le bilinguisme’ and ‘“They shall Speak the Arabic Language”’. See also Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity, 230–60 for the relative standing of Coptic and Greek.

8 Delehaye, ‘Martyrs d’Égypte’, 149–54. See Orlandi, ‘Letteratura copta’, 91.9 Baumeister, Martyr Invictus; Kossack, Die Legende im koptischen; Schenkel, Kultmythos;

Reymond and Barns, Four Martyrdoms, 1–2.



www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

Hagiography in Coptic

325

that the Greek prose romance, often seen as a direct ancestor of hagiography, has Egyptian roots.10 Though it has dominated research on Egyptian hagiography to this day, the search for origins and influence is an idle task, and one that need not concern us here. It is perhaps more useful to consider when and how those texts were written, and what their authors were trying to achieve – other than unsuccessfully imitating the Greeks.

Although both are ultimately based on biography, Lives and martyrologies are in fact quite different in their content and scope. While the former aimed at edification or functioned as monastic foundation narratives, the latter were the supports of a cult and a shrine and were used liturgically. Miracle collections, of which none has been preserved in full in Coptic as an independent work, were typically companion volumes of martyrologies, and served the promotion of the martyrs’ shrines. This does not mean that miracles were absent from monastic hagiographies, but their role was rather to show the holy man’s proximity to God, and they were usually performed during his lifetime. As for homilies on saints (enkomia or ‘panegyrics’), they usually adopted one of the two styles. Most often they are a compendium of the Life or the Passion and the corresponding collection of miracles, interspersed with exhortations about orthodoxy and Christian morality. In what follows, Lives and martyrologies will be treated successively in two separate sections, which will attempt to insert them in their respective contexts of production. A third section will more specifically address the chronology of martyrologies, which remains a subject of debate.11

Vitae

As the opening chapters of this book demonstrate, some of the earliest Christian biographies were produced in Egypt. They are idealised biographies of characters deemed to be exceptional because of their detachment from the world. Several of these seem to have been translated into Coptic at a relatively early stage, and we still have today Coptic versions of the Life of Antony by Athanasios and the Life of Paul of Tamma, a fourth-century anchorite under whose name several fragmentary works survive. The tradition of the monastic vita encompassed the biographies both of solitary monks and of founders of monastic communities. In the latter case, composition in Coptic seems to have been practised from the very beginning, alongside Greek texts, but independently from them. Thus several Lives of the founding father of coenobitism, Pachomios, were composed directly in Coptic from the late fourth century onwards, and so were those of his immediate successors.

10 Barns, ‘Egypt and the Greek Romance’.11 The only chronological reconstruction of Coptic literature has been suggested by

Tito Orlandi, in several successive articles; the most complete is Orlandi, ‘Letteratura copta’; more specifically focused on hagiography are Orlandi, ‘Hagiography’ and ‘Cycle’; see the discussion in Papaconstantinou, Culte des saints, 31–4 and below, 328–31.



www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com


326

Shenoute, the famous fifth-century abbot of what has become known as the White Monastery, and acclaimed as the first great Coptic-language author, is also the subject of a biography traditionally attributed to his disciple Besa (BHO 1074–5, 1077).12 Another important founding father was apa Apollo ‘of Bawīṭ’, who in the fourth century set up a monastery south-west of Hermopolis; this was to become a huge monastic settlement in later times, and was still thriving in the ninth century. Although Apollo’s Life has not come down to us, its approximate contents can be retrieved from the later anonymous Life of his companion Phib.13

Several monastic biographies are related in one way or another to controversies within the Church. Thus the fallout between Origenists and anthropomorphites in the fourth century was behind the fifth-century anti-Origenist Life of Aphu (BHO 77), recounting the career of an anchorite who became bishop of Pemdje (Oxyrhynchus/al-Bahnasā) at the turn of the fourth century and who is said to have argued on the image of God with Theophilos of Alexandria.14 No other hagiographical work is directly related to the Origenist controversy, but once again, it is quite probable that several such texts did circulate in the fifth century.

It is however the Chalcedonian controversy that left the most durable marks on Coptic literature as a whole, and hagiography is no exception. Monastic vitae of the late fifth and sixth centuries do not only promote the virtues of the monastic environment and way of life: they see monks and monasteries as the main loci of the ‘resistance’ to the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon. During that period a number of anti-Chalcedonian monastic vitae were produced, such as the Life of Abraham the Archimandrite (BHO 11) or the Life of Manasse (BHO 593). A group of texts referring to Dioskoros of Alexandria belong to this tendency, with a heavy insistence on the patriarch’s monastic status: one Life of Dioskoros attributed to the deacon Theopistos is preserved in Coptic (see BHO 258), and another by the deacon Timotheos is known from the Arabic summary found in the Synaxarion.15 Attributed to Dioskoros is also the famous Enkomion of Makarios of Tkow, held to have been composed in the late sixth century, but either using sources from the period following the Council of Chalcedon and of Dioskoros’ exile, or actually written during that period itself.16

This was also the period of composition of an Ecclesiastical History in Coptic, which is organised around the figures of the successive bishops of Alexandria. It includes a series of patriarchal vitae, setting the tone for the later and more famous History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, which incorporated the initial Coptic work. An

12 Besa’s authorship of the Life as we know it has been questioned: Emmel, Shenoute’s Literary Corpus, I, 92 and n. 149–50. Much has been written on Shenoute: see Frandsen and Richter-Aerøe, ‘Shenoute: a Bibliography’, and Emmel, Shenoute’s Literary Corpus, II, 954–85.

13 On the whole question see Orlandi, ‘Letteratura copta’, 71–2.14 On the terms of the controversy in this text, see Florovsky, ‘Theophilus of Alexandria

and Apa Aphou of Pemdje’, with critical bibliography on the edition, 275 n. 2.15 Synaxarium Alexandrinum, ed. Forget, 88–9.16 On the sources, see Orlandi, ‘Letteratura copta’, 98–9, and for a literary interpretation

of the text, Emmel, ‘Immer erst das Kleingedruckte lesen’.



www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com


327

official history of the anti-Chalcedonian see of Alexandria and the Church that was attached to it, this work presents as founders of what it considers as the ‘orthodox’ Church such important pre-Chalcedonian figures as Athanasios and Cyril.17

Lives of Alexandrian bishops also circulated as independent texts, perhaps at a later date, as full-fledged developments of the shorter biographies of the Ecclesiastical History. This was especially true of symbolic figures of the Egyptian anti-Chalcedonian Church. Apart from the two Lives of Dioskoros mentioned above, we also know a late sixth-century Life of Athanasios, which depicts him as the founding figure of Egyptian orthodoxy: his fight against the Arianism of the emperors, his persecution and exile, are implicitly paralleled with those of Dioskoros. Athanasios’ uncompromising attitude is turned into an exemplum by the biographers of his post-Chalcedonian successors. In the late seventh century, the Life of Benjamin, who was patriarch at the time of the Arab conquest, followed along the same lines. Persecuted and driven to exile by the heretical Byzantine emperor, Benjamin is said to have found more understanding among the Muslim conquerors, who immediately recognised his holiness.18 Benjamin’s orthodoxy is authenticated through this recognition by an infidel, as it is also through the defeat of the Byzantines, which shows their doctrine had found disgrace in God’s eyes.19 The Life of Isaac of Alexandria by Menas of Nikiou (BHO 539), set under Ἁbd al-Ἁzīz (685–705), but written after his death, paints an idyllic picture of the relations between the Muslim governor and the patriarch, that reposes on the latter’s charismatic personality and diplomatic skills. This is the last patriarchal biography that has come down to us in Coptic.

Enkomia of bishops and monastic figures are relatively rare, especially in the early period. This is partly due to the fact that enkomia were written to be read during the feasts of the saints they praised, and that, until the late sixth century, hardly any monks or bishops were at the centre of a liturgical cult.20 Among the earliest are an Enkomion of Apollo, a mid-sixth-century archimandrite of the monastery of Apa Isaac, by Stephen, Bishop of Hnes (Heracleopolis/Ihnās), and the Enkomion of Makarios of Tkow mentioned above, both with a strong anti-Chalcedonian flavour. A Panegyric on Saint Antony by John, Bishop of Shmun (Hermopolis/al-Ashmūneyn) at the turn of the century, explicitly mentions the saint’s feast at a shrine outside the city. John’s is a highly rhetorical work, which contains praise for Antony’s country as well as for his ascetic behaviour and spiritual elevation. As a founding figure of Egyptian monasticism, Antony is thus appropriated by yet another member of the anti-Chalcedonian hierarchy so as to lend authority to his vision of the holiness of Egypt and its Church.

17 On the early history of the see, and later Patriarchate, of Alexandria, see Davis, The Early Coptic Papacy.

18 On Benjamin, see Müller, ‘Benjamin I’.19 On this classic theme of military victory translating God’s satisfaction and vice versa,

especially in the context of the Arab conquests, see Hoyland, Seeing Islam, 524–6.20 Papaconstantinou, ‘The Cult of Saints’.



www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com


328

An important anchorite, and one whose cult was among the earliest to appear,21 is Onophrios, on whom, apart from a Life (BHO 818), we have an Enkomion by Pisenthios, the famous bishop of Keft (d. 631/632), containing a summary of Onophrios’ life and exhortations on Christian behaviour. Pisenthios himself is the subject of two Lives in Coptic, one in Sahidic by John the Presbyter and one in Bohairic by Moses of Keft (Koptos/Qifṭ); another account exists in Arabic.22 The dates of these texts are not easy to define, but they can hardly have been written before the middle of the seventh century. Another late monastic biography is the Life of Samuel of Kalamun, a monk of the monastery of that name in the Fayyum who probably died just before the Arab conquest. The Life as it has come down to us claims to have been written four generations later, which would put its redaction in the 760s. The absence of any reference to the conquest, however, and the insistence on the persecution of the Monophysites by the governor Kyros (d. 642), who seems to be still alive as the author is writing, are signs that it was originally composed between the death of Samuel and that of Kyros and was later reworked.23 As we know it today, the Sahidic Life of Samuel contains passages that display a style very close to eighth-century martyrologies (see below), in particular scenes of torture embedded in the narrative that are presumably later additions to the original account. The frame story that puts the Life four generations after Samuel’s death gives a very plausible date for this reworking.

The last monastic biography extant in Coptic is the Life of John Khamé, a ninth-century monk who founded a monastery in the Wādi ‘n Natrūn. It is modelled on early monastic Lives, insisting on the holiness and asceticism of its protagonist and eschewing all but a couple of contextual references. The date of its composition is difficult to establish, but should be set somewhere between the second half of the tenth century and the first half of the thirteenth.24 It was at the beginning of that period that Coptic quite swiftly gave way to Arabic as a literary language, apparently not without some resistance,25 of which this work may be an example.

Martyrologies

The writing of martyrologies was admittedly a much more productive activity among Coptic authors than that of straightforward sacred biography. Its origins are traditionally seen to lie in the official transcripts of the real martyrs’ trials,

21 Papaconstantinou, Culte des saints, 161–2.22 Cf. Abdel Sayed, Untersuchungen zu den Texten über Pesyntheus, Bischof von Koptos

(569–632).23 Here I follow Butler, The Arab Conquest, 185 and n. 2, and Hoyland, Seeing Islam, 286

n. 86, against the editor’s early ninth-century dating.24 Evelyn-White, ‘John Khamé’, 305 n. 1; the only surviving manuscript bears the date

1255.25 See Papaconstantinou, ‘They Shall Speak the Arabic Language’.



www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com


329

which were narrated without any additions to form what has been called the Acts of the martyrs. With time, details were inserted into those accounts, including information on the life of the martyr and miracles performed during his trial. This led to what Delehaye called the ‘epic passions’, no doubt the largest category among martyrologies in general.26

Acts in their original form have rarely come down to us. Only two are known in Coptic, recounting the martyrdom of Kolluthos in May 304, and that of the martyr Stephanos in early December 305, although these have already undergone translation from Greek. The second redaction of the Martyrdom of Kolluthos is a good example of the way ‘Acts’ were turned into ‘epic passions’ through the insertion of miracles, the description of tortures and the length and insolence of the martyr’s answers to the persecutor.27 This phenomenon was slow and gradual, but probably came to maturity with the flowering of the cult of saints from the mid-fifth century onwards. Many of the texts in this early period were initially composed in Greek and later translated, often with a certain degree of poetic freedom.28 Some of these may be the result of multiple rewriting imposed on the original ‘official’ Acts; most, however, were certainly literary inventions made up to justify the discovery of martyrs’ relics over a century after their supposed death, and the establishment of new shrines in their name.29 One first group of texts, described by Tito Orlandi as ‘classical epic passions’, includes the Martyrdoms – or fragments thereof – both of local martyrs like Papnuthios (BHO 840), Epimachos of Pelusium, Kyros and John, Djoore (BHO 326, 327), Herai of Tamma and Dius (BHO 262), and of foreign ones such as Pantoleon (BHO 837), Merkourios of Caesarea, James the Persian (BHO 396–397), Leontios of Tripoli, Philotheos of Antioch and Eustathios of Antioch. Most of these texts are also extant in other languages and are usually considered to be translations from Greek originals.

From this relatively early stage, the tendency to link martyrologies to one another by bringing up the same characters and elements of stories appears as a very typical feature of the Egyptian martyrological production. This has been described as ‘the creation of cycles’, and several such ‘cycles’ have been identified. Among the earliest are a group of texts relating to the emperor Julian,30 and another built around the figure of the persecutor Arianos, whose conversion and martyrdom it describes.31 A later group of texts is made up of independent martyrologies whose

26 See Delehaye, Les passions, 171–226.27 The process is well described in Aigrain, L’hagiographie, 140–55.28 Delehaye, ‘Martyrs d’Égypte’, 149–54.29 This practice is explicitly described – and criticised – by Shenoute (see Lefort, ‘La

chasse aux reliques’), and was common in all parts of the Empire; see, for instance, Dassmann, ‘Ambrosius und die Märtyrer’.

30 See Orlandi, ‘La leggenda di san Mercurio’; other texts include the Passio of Judas Kyriacos (BHO 234) and that of Eusignios: Coquin and Lucchesi, ‘Une version copte de la Passion de saint Eusignios’.

31 These are the martyrdoms of Apollonios and Philemon (BHO 80 and 973), of Asclas (BHO 111) and of Arianos himself (BHO 110).



www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com


330

only link is the claim to have been written by the ‘scribe’ Julius of Kbehs (Aqfahs), who collected the bodies of the martyrs to offer them proper treatment, and was eventually martyred himself.

In all the above cycles, the texts are bound together by their relation to one or two central characters. The last and most famous hagiographical cycle, however, goes well beyond this elementary level. Known as the ‘Basilides cycle’, it connects most of the characters mentioned in the different martyrologies, including the protagonists, through ties of kinship and friendship.32 Basilides was a member of an important Antiochene family, which counted such figures as Anatolios the Persian (BHO, p. 12), Eusebios (BHO 292), Makarios (BHO 578), Justus, Theodore the Oriental (BHO 1174), Apater and Herai (BHO 73), Claudius (BHO 195) and Victor, who all ended their lives as martyrs under Diocletian. Put together, their Passions thus form a kind of saga of the persecution of Basilides’ friends and relatives, all initially close to Diocletian’s court at Antioch, and later exiled to Egypt to be executed. Perhaps the most surprising legend to be found within that cycle is the one concerning Diocletian himself. He is said to have been born to a Christian family of the Nile Valley under the initial name Agrippidas; after some years spent as a shepherd in Egypt, he became a soldier and married into Basilides’ family. When he became emperor, members of his new kin-group formed his état-major during the Persian wars. After being vexed on some matter by the patriarch of Antioch, Diocletian rejected the Christian faith and started a large-scale persecution against its practitioners.33 His generals and kinsmen did not follow him, and consequently, none of them was spared: they were all exiled to Egypt where they suffered martyrdom.

As far as content and structure are concerned, the characteristics of Coptic martyrologies have most famously been described by Delehaye, whose systematic classification of literary motifs survives the irony with which he treated ‘cette misérable littérature’.34 More than other hagiographies, these are made up of a repetitive blend of a few core ingredients that hardly vary from text to text. Delehaye laments the lack of ‘personality’ of the martyrs, and the all too extravagant use of stock images and motifs. Incredible tortures are piled up on the same individual, who always gets away through divine intervention, until God finally decides to bestow on him the crown of martyrdom and lets him die – usually after giving him a speech of variable length on his future life and the success of his shrine and cult. Delehaye also identified and described the various cycles, and noted that they sometimes overlap: thus the Passion of Makarios of Antioch belongs to the Basilides cycle, but also claims to have been written by Julius of Kbehs. Delehaye’s conclusion was that all these martyrologies were translated from Greek – probably Alexandrian –

32 Descriptions of the cycles are given in Galtier, ‘Contribution’; Orlandi, ‘Hagiography’, 1195–6; Delehaye, ‘Martyrs d’Égypte’, 136–48; for the early period only, Orlandi, ‘Letteratura copta’, 111–13.

33 For an interpretation of the Diocletian legend, see Papaconstantinou, ‘Historiography, Hagiography’; overviews in Schwartz, ‘Dioclétien’ and Van Den Berg-Ontswedder, ‘Diocletian’.

34 ‘Les martyrs d’Égypte’, 138–48.



www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com


331

originals, since they ‘made intensive use of the epic writing procedures’, which he defined as a Greek phenomenon.35

Building on the foundations set by the famous Bollandist, Theofried Baumeister devoted a full monograph to Coptic martyrologies in the early 1970s.36 However, after a thorough analysis of the texts, he reached very different conclusions. Although they may follow ‘Greek’ compositional models, Coptic martyrologies are, in his eyes, essentially Egyptian in their conceptions and choice of literary motifs. Baumeister focused on what he calls the ‘Wiederherstellungsmotif’, namely the descriptions of the piecing together of the tortured martyr by an archangel before a new set of tortures can be heaped on him. In some cases, it even comes to one or more resurrections. To this ‘theme of the enduring life’, Baumeister found Egyptian antecedents, and he related it to local conceptions concerning the necessary integrity of the dead body. To describe the group of martyrologies that include this motif, he coined the expression ‘koptischer Konsens’, which has now gained wide acceptance.

The Dating of the Cycles

There has been until now little agreement among scholars concerning the date of the martyrological cycles. Although he did not suggest any chronology for the texts he studied, Delehaye evidently believed them to date sometime between the fifth century and the seventh, i.e. between the rise of ‘epic passions’ and the Arab conquest. Baumeister also gave a global date for the texts of the koptischer Konsens ranging from the first half of the fifth century to around 600, a period which saw the flowering of the cult of saints.37 This was in line with his definition of the texts as ‘Kultätiologien’, written to justify the existence of a cult.

However, neither Delehaye nor Baumeister were really interested in dating the cycles. The first real attempt at a chronology of Coptic hagiography came from Tito Orlandi, who in several successive articles refined his argument and suggested a general pattern of literary development, on which the present chapter has heavily relied.38 According to this pattern, at first almost all works were translated from Greek, although gradually, from the mid-fifth century onwards, composition directly in Coptic started including hagiographical works, partly under the influence of Shenoute’s writings and partly as a consequence of the Chalcedonian controversy. In the late sixth century, Orlandi identifies a wave of Coptic-language authors, mainly bishops in the network of patriarch Damianos (569–605), such as John of Shmun, John of Paralos or Constantine of Siut, who produced enkomia both of martyrs and of monastic saints. He sees the initial formation of the cycles, and

35 ‘Les martyrs d’Égypte’, 152.36 Baumeister, Martyr Invictus.37 Baumeister, Martyr Invictus, 72–3.38 See the references given above, n. 11.



www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com


332

more generally of the ‘koptischer Konsens’, as parallel to this surge of writing in Coptic, which became the norm from the seventh century onwards. According to Orlandi, the Basilides cycle evolved from what he calls ‘the ancient Antiochene cycle’, which appears to be established at the end of the sixth century, in such texts as the two panegyrics of Claudius of Antioch by Constantine, Bishop of Siut (Lykopolis/Asyūṭ). Orlandi attributes to this early stage the Passions of Claudius, of Victor of Antioch, of Kosmas and Damianos, of Epima, as well as the late redaction of the Passion of Psote. Basilides is among the people mentioned in these texts, but without the prominence he has in the cycle that bears his name. That last phase of the ‘Antioch legend’, together with the cycle of Julius of Kbehs and with what he describes as the ‘cycle of the Theodores’,39 Orlandi would date to the first century after the Arab conquest.

The principal reason given for this dating is stylistic. The martyrologies of the cycles have a strong resemblance to another category of texts, the homiletic cycles. These are groups of homilies, sometimes but not always enkomia of saints, attributed to the same author, usually a patristic figure, real or fictitious. Although these attributions are generally false, they have served to define a number of cycles, such as the ‘cycle of Athanasios’ or that ‘of John Chrysostom’. Orlandi explains this production of pseudepigrapha by the ‘cultural circumstances’ that made them necessary, namely a prohibition of the writing of new texts after the Arab conquest that he thinks might have existed alongside the more well-known prohibition of the erection of new churches.40 Attribution to patristic authors was, in his opinion, a way of making these texts acceptable to the new authorities. Thus the homiletic cycles should be dated to the first century after the conquest, and the hagiographical ones with them. At the other end, Orlandi rightly sees the ninth century as a terminus ante quem for the composition of these texts, because in manuscripts of that time, the various martyrologies were re-ordered so as to follow the liturgical calendar, and were no longer grouped together according to content.

Though extremely useful, and certainly right in its main lines, Orlandi’s remains an ideal model and does not go without some difficulties. First the internal succession of the texts: the proposed scheme takes for granted that the development of the cycles towards greater integration was entirely linear, from simpler to more complex, and that the more elements of that integration one finds in a text, the later it comes chronologically. The tendency of legendary biographies to grow more and more ‘baroque’ with time is of course a common feature,41 but this does not exclude the coexistence, during the same period, of various levels of complexity within the same group of texts, or of the production of works in different styles. In

39 This comprises a series of texts on Theodore Stratelates and Theodore the Oriental: BHO 1166–7, 1169 (Strat.), 1174 (Or.), 1175 (a common enkomion edited by Winstedt).

40 Orlandi, Omelie copte, 15–16.41 This is a general tendency of martyrologies in all languages, but also touches other

types of heroic narratives; telling examples are the development of biographies of the prophet Muhammad, or the growing extravagance of such modern ‘cycles’ as the James Bond film series.



www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com


333

particular, some translations from Greek may have been made at a much later date than Orlandi allows for.

The way Orlandi relates the dating of the hagiographical and homiletic cycles to the historical context also requires some qualification. First of all, nothing supports the idea of a prohibition for Christians to write new texts, not even the parallel with churches and monasteries: there are indeed a couple of clauses to this effect about places of worship in the ‘Ordinances of ‘Umar’, but they do not seem to have been enforced with much energy.42 Many texts were produced after the Arab conquest by Christian authors who signed them without hesitation.43 The pseudepigrapha should certainly be explained otherwise, perhaps simply as a way of lending greater prestige and legitimacy to the homilies, for reasons that are outside the scope of this survey. A second problem is that of the relation between homiletic and martyrological cycles. Although the stylistic argument carries some strength, it is also weakened by the nature of the transmission of such texts. They are all known from later manuscripts of the ninth, tenth or eleventh century, produced by scribes who were not copying their texts in the way we understand this term today. They and their predecessors reworked them and adapted them continuously to the changing situation, so that, in a way, composition and transmission became tangled up, and the fact that authorship was unclear only made this easier.44 Thus, what we have today is the result of a long process of redaction which has produced groups of texts that seem homogeneous in content and style. Precisely when this homogeneity was created, though, will remain uncertain, and can date back to the original redactions or to any given time during the transmission process, but can also be a gradual achievement.

The date for the initial redaction of the pseudepigraphic cycles – assuming they are all of the same date – is far from established, although a strong case has been made in favour of an early eighth-century date for one of the texts.45 The martyrological cycles lend themselves much less to contextual dating, which may explain the extremely varied dates that have been suggested until now. There are however good reasons to date them no earlier than the eighth century too, perhaps even no earlier than the second quarter of that century. Manuscripts containing martyrologies are extremely rare before the seventh century, and only after 700 do

42 On the ‘Ordinances of ‘Umar’, see Noth, ‘Problems of Differentiation’, 104, 108–9, and on the continuing activity of church construction or repair in Palestine, see Schick, The Christian Communities, 119–23.

43 So John III, Panegyric of Saint Menas, Menas of Nikiou, Panegyric on the martyr Macrobius of Pshati, Isaac the Presbyter, Life of Samuel of Kalamun among many others.

44 On this question, see the discussion in Hoyland, Seeing Islam, 34–40.45 Hoyland, Seeing Islam, 282–5, on a text of the Athanasian cycle which contains an

apocalypse; see, however, Décobert, ‘Sur l’arabisation’, 294–5 and n. 45 (not cited by Hoyland), who on different grounds would date the text no earlier than the middle of the eighth c. Hoyland’s arguments seem decisive here, and on closer examination, several points made by Décobert could actually fit this earlier date.



www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com


334

they actually become prominent in monastic or church libraries.46 A pseudepigraphic text titled Enkomion of Victor and attributed to Celestinus of Rome, which includes a collection of miracles and is closely related to the Martyrdom of Victor, contains a miracle relating the donation of a child to the saint’s shrine that bears a striking resemblance to the narrative parts of a series of 26 deeds on papyrus registering the donation of children to a monastery of the Theban area. These documents are dated between 730 and 785, and clearly belong to the same period and cultural milieu as the Enkomion.47 One may also adduce the considerable development of the genealogical motif in the Basilides cycle, which has no precedent in Coptic literature, and cannot but remind one of the fashion for such constructions among the Arabs from the early Abbasid period onwards.

That there should be a flowering of martyrological literature at that time is not at all surprising.48 The attempts by ‘Umar II (717–720) and especially the Abbasids to tax non-Muslims more heavily than Muslims and to levy taxes individually rather than collectively through mediating bodies such as monasteries or village councils seem to have been instrumental in promoting conversions to Islam, and it is around this time that the first mentions of large-scale apostasy appear in Christian sources. Under Abbasid rule, in the second half of the eighth century, stories about neo-martyrs became common in Syria and Palestine.49 In Egypt, the number of accounts concerning neo-martyrs in general is strikingly small, and only one seems to go back to the early period.50 Instead, there was during the same period a rise of martyrological writing in which one is inclined to see a form of heroic narrative designed to serve as a model of behaviour for Christians tempted by apostasy, as a way of ‘holding one’s troops’ through the glorification of previous exempla.51

Although they have been the subject of much irony, the themes developed in the martyrologies show considerable coherence and contribute in various ways to the redefinition of the Coptic Church under Arab rule, by rewriting the history of its origins and defining a new foundation myth for the community. This they achieve through the appropriation of the persecutions and the epos of the martyrs

46 See Clarysse, ‘Coptic Martyr Cult’, 394–5.47 On the Theban documents and their relation to hagiography, see Papaconstantinou,

‘Θεία οἰκονομία’.48 For what follows, see Hoyland, Seeing Islam, 336–47, and the references there.49 At the time of the patriarch Michael (743–767), 24,000 Christians are said to deny

their faith: Copto-Arabic Synaxarium, 16 Barmahāt, Basset (1922), 233; references on early neo-martyrs in Hoyland, Seeing Islam, 346.

50 All these accounts are in Arabic, except one, the thirteenth-century Martyrdom of John of Phanijoit (BHO 519) which survives in Coptic. John, however, is not executed as a result of pressure to convert, but because after converting to Islam, he forsook it and reverted to the Christian faith, an act normally punished by the death penalty (see Hoyland, Seeing Islam, 344).

51 Orlandi suggested an ‘allegorical’ reading of the martyrologies, where behind Diocletian and the Romans one should recognise the first Abbasid caliphs and the Arabs. However, he only sees the texts as covert protestations against the Muslims from authors who did not dare express themselves openly, which may seem slightly exaggerated.



www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com


335

and their translation into a local Egyptian idiom, where all the important characters and events are naturalised.52 In this respect, the interconnectedness of the cycles can be seen as a way of creating a common historical account without actually producing a unique narrative, but linking together a number of independent ones. Although it started after the Council of Chalcedon, with the production of Lives of anti-Chalcedonian monks and the slow rise of Coptic-language composition, this process of redefinition of the Coptic Church found a new impetus and took a different direction in the century and a half that followed the Arab conquest, an event which provided an unexpected solution to the power struggle that for two centuries had opposed the imperial Church to what was being slowly constructed as the ‘local’ Church.

NB: For comments on early drafts of this chapter the author is indebted to Anne Boud’hors, Béatrice Caseau, Muriel Debié, Stephanos Efthymiadis, and above all, Stephen Emmel, whose careful reading and learned suggestions greatly improved this text; her thanks also go to Jason Zaborowski for providing unpublished material.

Bibliography

(a) Editions of Primary Sources Cited by Saint or Title

Antony (d. 356)Life by Athanasios: ed. G. Garitte, Vita Antonii, CSCO 117–18, scr. copt. 13–14

(Leuven 1949).Panegyric by John, Bishop of Shmun (late sixth c.): ed. G. Garitte, ‘Panégyrique de

saint Antoine par Jean, évêque d’Hermopolis’, OCP 9 (1943), 100–34, 330–65.

Aphu (late fourth–early fifth c.)Life (BHO 77) (fifth c.): Italian tr., T. Orlandi and A. Campagnano, Vite di monaci

copti, Collana di testi patristici 41 (Rome 1984), 55–65.

Apollo ‘of Bawīṭ’ (fourth c.)Life (reconstruction of the text from the Life of Phib) (4th/5th): T. Orlandi and A.

Campagnano, Vite dei monaci Phif e Longino (Milan 1975), 20–37.

52 For a complete argument on this question, see Papaconstantinou, ‘Historiography, Hagiography’; see also the remarks by Harvey, ‘Introduction’, xi.



www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com


336

Enkomion by Stephen: ed. K.H. Kuhn, A Panegyric on Apollo, Archimandrite of the Monastery of Isaac, by Stephen, Bishop of Heracleopolis Magna, CSCO 394–5, scr. copt. 39–40 (Leuven 1978).

Athanasios (ca. 293–373)Life (BHO 115): Italian tr., T. Orlandi, Testi copti (Milan 1968), 87–161.

Benjamin (590–661)Life: ed. É. Amélineau, ‘Fragments coptes pour servir à l’histoire de la conquête de

l’Égypte par les Arabes’, Journal asiatique, 8th ser., 12 (1888), 368–78.Life: ed. B. Evetts, ‘History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church of Alexandria’,

PO 1 (1907), 487–518.

EpimaPassio: ed. T. Mina, Le martyre d’apa Epima (Cairo 1937).

EpimachosPassio (BHO 274): re-edition, M. van Esbroeck, ‘Saint Épimaque de Péluse, III: les

fragments coptes BHO 274’, AB 100 (1982), 125–45.

EusigniosPassio: ed. R.-G. Coquin and E. Lucchesi, ‘Une version copte de la Passion de saint

Eusignios’, AB 100 (1982), 185–208.

EustathiosPassio: ed. E.A.W. Budge, Coptic Martyrdoms in the Dialect of Upper Egypt (London

1914), 102–27, 356–80.

HeraiPassio (BHO 376): new fragments in A. Pietersma and S.T. Comstock, ‘Coptic

Martyrdoms in the Chester Beatty Library’, Bulletin of the American Society Papyrology 24 (1987), 143–63.

Isaac of Alexandria (late seventh c.)Life by Menas of Nikiu (BHO 539): re-edition and French tr., E. Porcher, ‘Vie d’Isaac

patriarche d’Alexandrie de 686 à 689’, PO 11 (1915), 301–90; English tr., D.N.



www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com


337

Bell, Mena of Nikiou, The Life of Isaac of Alexandria and the Martyrdom of Saint Macrobius (Kalamazoo 1988).

John Khamé (eighth c.?)Life: ed. M.H. Davis, ‘The Life of Abba John Khamé’, PO 14 (1919), 317–72.

John of Phanijoit (thirteenth c.)Martyrdom (BHO 519): ed. J.R. Zaborowski, The Coptic Martyrdom of John of Phanijoit.

Assimilation and Conversion to Islam in Thirteenth-Century Egypt, History of Christian-Muslim Relations 3 (Leiden 2004).

JustusPassio: ed. E.O. Winstedt, Coptic Texts on Saint Theodore the General, Saint Theodore the

Eastern, Chamoul and Justus (London and Oxford 1910), 188–99, 211–21.

Kolluthos (fourth c.?)Martyrdom: ed. E.A.E. Reymond and J.W.B. Barns, Four Martyrdoms from the Pierpont

Morgan Coptic Codices (Oxford 1973), 25–9, 145–50; 2nd redaction: ibid., 141–3, 11–13 (with English tr.).

Kosmas and DamianosPassio: ed. W.C. Till, Koptische Heiligen- und Märtyrer legenden. Texte, Übersetzungen

und Indices, vol. I, OCA 102 (Rome 1935), 154–68.

Kyros and JohnPassio: ed. B. Groterjahn, ‘Sa’idische Bruchstücke der Vita des Apa Kyros’, Le

Muséon 51 (1938), 33–67.

LeontiosPassio: ed. G. Garitte, ‘Textes hagiographiques orientaux relatifs http://www.

facebook.com/?ref=homeà saint Léonce de Tripoli. I. La passion copte saidique’, Le Muséon 78 (1965), 313–48.

Makarios of Tkow (fifth c.)Enkomion: ed. D.W. Johnson, A Panegyric on Macarius Bishop of Tkôw Attributed to

Dioskorus of Alexandria, CSCO 415–16, scr. copt. 41–2 (Leuven 1980).



www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com


338

MerkouriosPassio: ed. T. Orlandi, Passione e miracoli di S. Mercurio (Milan 1976); reviews by

P. Devos, AB 94 (1976), 425–8 and G. Godron, ‘À propos d’un récent ouvrage concernant saint Mercure’, IFAO. Livre du Centenaire (Cairo 1981), 213–23.

Onophrios (fourth c.?)Enkomion by Pisenthios, Bishop of Keft: ed. W.E. Crum, ‘Discours de Pisenthius sur

saint Onnophrius’, ROC 20 (1915–1917), 38–67.

Pachomios (ca. 292–346)Lives: French tr. on the re-ordered fragments in L.T. Lefort, Les Vies coptes de saint

Pachôme et de ses premiers successeurs (Louvain 1943); ed. of Sahidic fragments by L.T. Lefort, S. Pachomii Vitae sahidice scriptae, CSCO 99–100 (Paris 1933); and of the Bohairic Life with Latin tr., L.T. Lefort, S. Pachomii vita bohairice scripta, CSCO 89, 107, scr. copt. 7 and 11 (Leuven 1952–1953).

Patriarchs of AlexandriaHistory: ed. and Latin tr., T. Orlandi, Storia della chiesa di Alessandria, 2 vols (Milan

1968–1970).

Paul of Tamma (fourth c.)Life: fragments are published by T. Orlandi, Papiri copti di contenuto teologico

(Vienna 1974), 154–8; also M. Pezin, ‘Nouveau fragment copte concernant Paul de Tamma (P. Sorbonne inv. 2632)’, in Christianisme d’Égypte. Hommages à René-Georges Coquin, Cahiers de la Bibliothèque copte 9 (Paris and Louvain 1995), 15–20; and R.-G. Coquin, ‘Paul of Tamma’, The Coptic Encyclopaedia 6 (New York 1991), 1923–5. What remains of his works has been edited by T. Orlandi, Paolo di Tamma, Opere (Rome 1988).

Phib (late fourth c.)Life: Introduction, edition and Italian translation by T. Orlandi and A. Campagnano,

Vite dei monaci Phif e Longino (Milan 1975).

Philotheos (uncertain date)Passio: ed. T. Orlandi, ‘Il “dossier” copto di S. Filoteo’, AB 96 (1978), 117–20.



www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com


339

Pisenthios (569–632)Lives (in Coptic): ed. E. Revillout, ‘Vie de S. Pesunthius, évêque de Coptos’, Revue

égyptologique 9 (1900), 177–9 and 10 (1902), 165–8; one in Sahidic by John the Presbyter and one in Bohairic by Moses of Keft (Koptos/Qifṭ); another account exists in Arabic: De Lacy O’Leary, ‘The Arabic Life of S. Pisentius’, PO 22 (1930), 313–488.

Psote (uncertain date)Passio: ed. T. Orlandi, Il dossier copto del martire Psote (Milan 1978), 47–70.

Samuel of Kalamun (d. mid-seventh c.)Life (BHO 1035): re-edited with English tr., A. Alcock, The Life of Samuel of Kalamun by

Isaac the Presbyter (Warminster 1983), 1–37, 74–118, with fragments of a second, presumably much longer, Sahidic version, 67–73. Fragments of a Bohairic Life are preserved: see W.E. Crum, Catalogue of the Coptic Manuscripts in the British Museum (London 1905), 381–2, no 917.

Shenoute (ca. 360–ca. 450)Life (BHO 1075): English tr., D.N. Bell, Besa, The Life of Shenoute, Introduction

Translation and Notes (Kalamazoo 1983).

Stephen (first c.)Martyrdom: ed. and English tr., P. Van Minnen, ‘The Earliest Account of a Martyrdom

in Coptic’, AB 113 (1995), 13–38.

SynaxarionCopto-Arabic: ed. and French tr., R. Basset, ‘Le synaxaire arabe jacobite (rédaction

copte)’, in PO 1 (1907), 215–379; 3 (1909), 243–545; 11 (1916), 505–859; 16 (1922), 185–424 and 17 (1923), 525–782, with indices in PO 20 (1929), 739–90. Also ed. and Latin tr., I. Forget, Synaxarium Alexandrinum, CSCO 47–9, 67, Scr. arab. 3–5, 11 for the text and CSCO 78, 90, Scr. arab. 12–13 for the tr. (Leuven 1953–1954).

Theodore Stratelates and Theodore the OrientalEnkomion (BHO 1175): ed. and English tr., E.O. Winstedt, Coptic Texts on Saint

Theodore the General, Saint Theodore the Eastern, Chamoul and Justus (London and Oxford 1910), 1–133.



www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com


340

VictorPassio: ed. E.A.W. Budge, Coptic Martyrdoms in the Dialect of Upper Egypt (London

1914), 1–45, 253–98.

(b) Secondary Literature

Abdel Sayed, G.G., Untersuchungen zu den Texten über Pesyntheus, Bischof von Koptos (569–632) (Bonn 1984).

Aigrain, R., L’hagiographie – Ses sources, ses méthodes, son histoire (Paris 1953); repr. with a bibliographical supplement by R. Godding, SH 80 (Brussels 2000).

Bagnall, R., Egypt in Late Antiquity (Princeton 1993).Barns, J.W.B., ‘Egypt and the Greek Romance’, Akten des VIII. internationalen

Kongresses für Papyrologie, Wien 1955 = Mitteilungen aus der Papyrussammlung der österreichischen Nationalbibliothek n.s. 5 (1956), 29–36.

Baumeister, T., Martyr Invictus. Der Martyrer als Sinnbild der Erlösung in der Legende und im Kult der frühen koptischen Kirche. Zur Kontinuität des ägyptischen Denkens, Forschungen zur Volkskunde, 46 (Münster 1972).

Butler, A.J., The Arab Conquest of Egypt and the Last Thirty Years of the Roman Dominion (revised edition by P.M. Fraser, Oxford 1978).

Clarysse, W., ‘The Coptic Martyr Cult’, in Martyrium in Multidisciplinary Perspective. Memorial Louis Reekmans, ed. M. Lamberigts and P. Van Deun (Leuven 1995), 377–95.

Colin, G., ‘Le synaxaire éthiopien. État actuel de la question’, AB 106 (1988), 273–317.

Coquin, R.-G., ‘Le catalogue de la bibliothèque du couvent de saint Élie “du rocher” (Ostracon IFAO 13315)’, Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale 75 (1975), 207–39.

Coquin, R.-G., ‘Le synaxaire des Coptes. Un nouveau témoin de la recension de Haute Égypte’, AB 96 (1978), 351–65.

Coquin, R.-G., ‘Synaxarion: Editions of the Synaxarion’, The Coptic Encyclopaedia 7 (New York 1991), 2172–3.

Dassmann, E., ‘Ambrosius und die Märtyrer’, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 18 (1975), 49–68.

Davis, S.J., The Early Coptic Papacy: the Egyptian Church and its Leadership in Late Antiquity, The Popes of Egypt 1 (Cairo 2004).

Décobert, C., ‘Sur l’arabisation et l’islamisation de l’Égypte médiévale’, in Itinéraires d’Égypte. Mélanges offerts au père Maurice Martin, S.J., ed. C. Décobert (Cairo 1992), 273–300.

Delehaye, H., ‘Les martyrs d’Égypte’, AB 40 (1922), 5–154, 299–364.Delehaye, H., Les passions des martyrs et les genres littéraires, SH 13B (Brussels 21966).Depuydt, L., Catalogue of Coptic Manuscripts in the Pierpont Morgan Library (Leuven

1993).Emmel, S., ‘Immer erst das Kleingedruckte lesen. Die “Pointe verstehen” in

dem koptischen Panegyrikos auf Makarios von Tkōou’, in Ägypten-Münster:



www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com


341

Kulturwissenschaftliche Studien zu Ägypten, dem Vorderen Orient und verwandten Gebieten, donum natalicium viro doctissimo Erharto Graefe sexagenario ab amicis collegis discipulis ex aedibus Schlaunstraße 2/Rosenstraße 9 oblatum, ed. A.I. Blöbaum, J. Kahl and S.D. Schweitzer (Wiesbaden 2003), 91–104.

Emmel, S., Shenoute’s Literary Corpus, 2 vols, CSCO, Subs. 111–12 (Leuven 2004).Evelyn-White, H.G., ‘John Khamé and his Monastery’, in H.G. Evelyn-White, The

Monasteries of the Wādi ‘n Natrūn, vol. II, The History of the Monasteries of Nitria and Scetis (New York 1932), 305–8.

Florovsky, G., ‘Theophilus of Alexandria and Apa Aphou of Pemdje. The Anthropomorphites in the Egyptian Desert, II’, in Harry Austryn Wolfson Jubilee Volume (Jerusalem 1965), 275–310.

Frandsen, P.J. and E. Richter-Aerøe, ‘Shenoute: a Bibliography’, in Studies Presented to Hans Jakob Polotsky, ed. D.W. Young (Beacon Hill 1981), 147–76.

Galtier, E., ‘Contribution à l’étude de la littérature arabo-copte’, Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale 4 (1905), 105–221.

Harvey, S.A., ‘Introduction’, in Encomiastica from the Pierpont Morgan Library, ed. L. Depuydt (Leuven 1993).

Hoyland, R., Seeing Islam as Others Saw It. A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam, Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam 13 (Princeton 1997).

Kossack, W., Die Legende im koptischen. Untersuchungen zur Volksliteratur Ägyptens (Bonn 1970).

Lefort, L.T., ‘La chasse aux reliques des martyrs en Égypte au IVe siècle’, La nouvelle Clio 6 (1954), 225–30.

Müller, C.D.G., ‘Benjamin I, 38. Patriarch von Alexandrien’, Le Muséon 69 (1956), 313–40.

Noth, A., ‘Problems of Differentiation between Muslims and non-Muslims: Re-reading the “Ordinances of ‘Umar” (al-shurūṭ al-’Umariyya)’, in Muslims and Others in Early Islamic Society, ed. R. Hoyland (Aldershot 2004), 103–24 (originally published in German in 1987).

Orlandi, T., ‘La leggenda di san Mercurio e l’uccisione di Giuliano l’apostata’ Studi Copti 4 (Milan-Varese 1968), 89–145.

Orlandi, T., Omelie copte (Turin 1981).Orlandi, T., ‘Un testo copto sulla dominazione araba in Egitto’, in Acts of the Second

International Congress of Coptic Study, Rome, 22–26 September 1980, ed. T. Orlandi and F. Wisse (Rome 1985), 225–33.

Orlandi, T., ‘Coptic Literature’, in The Roots of Egyptian Christianity, ed. B.A. Pearson and J.E. Goehring (Philadelphia 1986), 51–81.

Orlandi, T., ‘Cycle’, in The Coptic Encyclopaedia 3 (New York 1991), 666–8.Orlandi, T., ‘Hagiography’, in The Coptic Encyclopaedia 4 (New York 1991), 1191–7.Orlandi, T., ‘Letteratura copta e cristianesimo nazionale egiziano’, in L’Egitto

cristiano. Aspetti e problemi in età tardoantica, ed. A. Camplani (Rome 1997), 39–120.

Papaconstantinou, A., Le culte des saints en Égypte des Byzantins aux Abbassides. L’apport des inscriptions et des papyrus grecs et coptes (Paris 2001).



www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com


342

Papaconstantinou, A., ‘Θεία οἰκονομία’. Les actes thébains de donation d’enfants ou la gestion monastique de la pénurie’, in Mélanges Gilbert Dagron, TM 14 (2002), 511–26.

Papaconstantinou, A., ‘The Cult of Saints: a Haven of Continuity in a Changing World?’, in Egypt in the Byzantine World, 450–700, ed. R. Bagnall (Cambridge 2005), 350–67.

Papaconstantinou, A., ‘Historiography, Hagiography, and the Making of the Coptic “Church of the Martyrs” in Early Islamic Egypt’, DOP 60 (2006), 65–86.

Papaconstantinou, A., ‘“They Shall Speak the Arabic Language and Take Pride in it”: Reconsidering the Fate of Coptic after the Arab Conquest’, Le Muséon 120 (2007), 273–99.

Papaconstantinou, A., ‘Dioscore et le bilinguisme dans l’Égypte du VIe siècle’, in Les archives de Dioscore d’Aphroditè cent ans après leur découverte. Histoire et culture dans l’Égypte byzantine, ed. Jean-Luc Fournet, Études d’archéologie et d’histoire ancienne (Paris 2008), 77–88.

Peeters, P., ‘Traductions et traducteurs dans l’hagiographie orientale à l’époque byzantine’, AB 40 (1922), 241–98.

Reymond, E.A.E. and J.W.B. Barns, Four Martyrdoms from the Pierpont Morgan Coptic Codices (Oxford 1973).

Schenkel, W., Kultmythos und Märtyrerlegende. Zur Kontinuität des ägyptischen Denkens Göttinger Orientforschungen, IV. Reihe, Ägypten, 5 (Wiesbaden 1977).

Schick, R., The Christian Communities of Palestine from Byzantine to Islamic Rule, Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam 2 (Princeton 1995).

Schwartz, J., ‘Dioclétien dans la littérature copte’, Bulletin de la Société d’archéologie copte 15 (1958–1960), 151–66.

Van Den Berg-Ontswedder, G., ‘Diocletian in the Coptic Tradition’, Bulletin de la Société d’archéologie copte 29 (1990), 87–122.

(c) Tools and Bibliographic Essays

As with other Oriental languages, the BHO (1910) is an essential guide to Coptic hagiography. However, many texts have been published since then which will not be found grouped in a single publication. Entries on individual saints in The Coptic Encyclopaedia (New York 1991) are usually of great assistance. One may also consult the Corpus dei Manuscritti Copti Letterari (CMCL), an online compendium of Coptic literature (http://cmcl.let.uniroma1.it), which includes a bibliography on hagiographical texts.

Updates and reports on recent work in the fields of Coptic literature, Copto-Arabic studies, and monasticism, all of which contain information on hagiography, can be found in the Acts of successive International Congresses of Coptic Studies since 1980:

Acts of the Second International Congress of Coptic Study, Roma, 22–26 September 1980, ed. T. Orlandi and F. Wisse (Rome 1985).



www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com

www

.ash

gate

.com


343

Coptic Studies. Acts of the Third International Congress of Coptic Studies, Warsaw, 20–25 August 1984, ed. W. Godlewski (Warsaw 1990).

Actes IVe Congrès copte, Louvain-la-Neuve, 5–10 septembre 1988, 2 vols, ed. M. Rassart-Debergh and J. Ries (Louvain-la-Neuve 1992).

Acts of the 5th International Congress of Coptic Studies, Washington 12–15 August 1992, 3 vols (Washington, DC 1993).

Ägypten in spätantiker und christlicher Zeit. Akten des 6. Koptologenkongresses, Münster, 20.–26. Juli 1996, 2 vols, ed. S. Emmel, M. Krause, S.G. Richter and S. Schaten (Wiesbaden 1999).

Coptic Studies on the Threshold of a New Millennium. Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Coptic Studies, Leiden, 27 August – 2 September 2000, ed. M. Immerzeel and J. van der Vliet (Leuven 2004).

Actes du huitième Congrès International d’Études Coptes, Paris, 28 Juin–3 Juillet 2004, 2 vols, ed. N. Bosson and A. Boud’hors, OLA 163 (Leuven 2007).

Similar surveys can also be found in the following journals:Archiv für Papyrusforschung 44 (1998), 140–71; 45 (1999), 281–301; 47 (2001), 196–228

and 49 (2003), 127–62, the first two by M. Krause, the others by S. Richter and G. Wurst.

Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 3 (1999), 184–201 and 6 (2002), 232–52, by H.-G. Bethge, U.U. Müller and U.-K. Plisch.

Documents

hagiography in Coptic