Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/403

 EGYPT

351

EGYPT

(a corruption of Gr. AlyiirTioi). The Arab conquerors thus designated the old inhabitants of Egypt (in vast maj ority followers of Dioscurus) in contradistinction both to themselves and to the Melchites of Greek origin and language who were still in communion with the Catholic Church, but have since drifted within the orbit of the so-called Orthodox, i. e. schismatic Greek, Church. A general article on the Coptic Church will be found under Alexandria, The Chukch of. Special features of importance are treated under the titles Alexandria, Council.s of; Gnosticism; Monasti- cism; Persecution; Sacraments; Versions of the Bible. See also Athanasius; Cyril of Alex.\ndri.4.; DioNYSins of Ale.xandria; Mark; Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria; Clement of Alexan- dria; Origen; Dioscurus; Melchites; Mis.sions. In the present article we shall treat in particular of the origins and constitution of the Coptic Church, espe- cially the question of its episcopate, to the Council of NiciBa (32o). We shall close with a short sketch of the present condition of both the Jacobite and the Uniat branches of the Coptic Church, chiefly from the point of view of their organization.

1. Early Christianity in Egypt. — We have no direct evidence of Christianity having existed in Egypt until Clement of Alexandria (a. d. 150-220) when it had already spread over the land. What we know of the Church of Egypt before that time is exclusively through inferences or unconfirmed traditions pre- served principally by Eusebius (see below). Thus we may infer the existence of Cliristianity in Egypt dur- ing the second century from the fact that under Trajan a Greek version of the " Gospel accortling to the He- brews" was being circulated there (Duchesne, Histoire Ancienne de I'Eglise, I, 126). We know that this Gospel was the book of the JudiEO-Christians. Its very name points to the existence at the same date of another Christian community, recruited from among the Gentiles. This, presumably, followed anotlier Gospel which Clement of Alexandria calls " the Gospel according to the Egyptians". (On the Gospel of the Egyptians, see Harnack, Chronologic der altchrist^ lichen Litteratur, I, 1, pp. 612-22; on the Gospel of the Hebrews, ibid., pp. 631-49.) This writer quotes it along with the " Gospel according to the He- brews ". However, he clearly distinguishes both from the canonical Gospels, which shows that those two apocrypha were then mere relics of the past, or at least were old enough to be entitled to some consideration in spite of their uncanonical character. Some writers, as Bardenhewer (Geschichte der altchristlichen Liter- atur, I, 387), think that the " Gospel according to the Egyptians" owed its name to its diffusion among the Egj'ptians throughout the land, in contradistinction to some other Gospel, canonical or uncanonical, in use in Alexandria. In this case we might conclude fur- thermore to the existence of a third Christian com- munity, consisting of native Egyptians, as it is diffi- cult to suppose that two Hellenistic communities would have used two different Gospels. But we have no evidence of a native Church having existed at as early a period as suggested by the elimination of the Gospel of the Egyptians from the canon at the time of Clement of Alexandria.

Again, organized Christianity at an early date in Egypt is, indirectly at least, attested by the activity of the Gnostic schools in that country in the third and fourth decades of the second century. Eusebius is authority that " Basilides the heresiarch", founder of one of these schools, came into prominence in the year 134. Other Egyptian founders of such schools, Val- entinus and Carpocrates, belong to the same period. Valentinus had already moved to Rome in 140, under the pontificate of Pope Hyginus (Irenteus, Adv. Ha;r., Ill, iv, 3), after having preached his doctrines in Egypt, his native country. As Duchesne (op. cit., I, 331) well remarks, one cannot believe that these heret-

ical manifestations represent all the Alexandrine Christianity. These schools, precisely because they are nothing but schools, suppose a Church, " the Great Church", as Celsus calls it; such aberrations, pre- cisely because labelled with their authors' names, tes- tify to the existence of the orthodox tradition in the country where they originated. This tradition, from which heresies of such a power of diffusion could sepa- rate themselves without putting its very existence in jeopardy, must have been endowed with a vitality which cannot be accounted for without at least half a century of normal growth and an organization under the guidance of strong and vigilant bishops. We may, therefore, safely conclude that as earlj^ as the middle decades of the first century there were in Alex- andria, and probably in the neighbouring nomes, or provinces, Christian communities consisting princi- pally of Hellenistic Jews and of those pious men {(po^oiiiemi riv 9e6i/) who had embraced the tenets and practices of Judaism without becoming regular proselytes. These communities must have had some numerical importance, for on the one hand the Jews were exceedingly numerous (over one million) in Egypt, and particularly in Alexandria, where they constituted two-fifths of the whole population; and on the other hand the philosophical eclecticism that gen- erally prevailed in Alexandria at that time co-oper- ated in favour of Christian ideas with the great doc- trinal tolerance then obtaining throughout Jutlaisra, to the extent, indeed, as Duchesne tersely puts it, that one might think like Philo or like Akiba, believe in the resurrection of the flesh or its final annihilation, expect the Messias or ridicule that hope, philosophize like Ecclesiastes or like the Wisdom of Solomon (op. cit., I, 122). Along with this judaizing Church, whose hopes and expectations were centred in Jerusalem and the Temple, who accepted Christianity and yet continued to observe the Law, there was another Church, decidedly Gentile — we might say. Christian — in its character and aspirations, as well as in its prac- tices. It is difficult to surmise what the relations of those two Churches to one another were in their de- tails. It is very probable that the destruction of Jeru- salem and the Temple by Titus, by putting an end to the hopes of many among the judaizing Church, brought them over to the Great Church, which hence- forth gained rapidly in numbers and prestige and soon became the only orthodox Christian Church.

2. Chronology of Early Episcopate. — Eusebius, both in his "Chronicle" and his "Ecclesiastical History" (cf. Harnack, "Chronologic der altchristlichen Litter- atur", I, 1, pp. 70-208), registers the names and years of pontificate of ten bishops supposed to have occupied in succession the See of Alexandria prior to the acces- sion of Demetrius (188-9). Those names he took from the now lost " Chronography " of Julius Afri- canus, who visited Egypt in the early portion of the third century. They are as follows: Anianus, 22 years; Abilius, 13; Cerdo, 11; Primus, 12; Justus, 11; Eumenes, 13; Marcus, 10; Celadion, 14; Agrip- pinus, 12; Julianus, 10. Dates are also given, each bishop being entered under the year of reign of the Roman Emperor in which his accession took place. Thus Anianus is entered under the eighth year of Xero (a. d. 62-3). It seems certain, however, that these syn- chronistic indications do not belong to the list as found by Julius Africanus, but were computed by himself, from Demetrius down, on the years of pontificate of the several bishops. The same writer (Harnack, "Chronologic", I, 1, p. 706) is authority for another tradition preserved also by Eusebius, to the effect that Christianity was first introduced in Egypt by St. Mark the Evangelist in the third year of Claudius (a. d. 43), only one year after St. Peter established his see in Rome, and one year before Evodius had been raised to the See of Antioch. He preached there his Gospel and founded Churches in Alexandria. Little is added by