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 EGYPT

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EGYPT

Bartholomew; the MartjTdoras of St. James, son of Zebedee, vSt. James the Less, St. Peter, St. Paul; also the life by the Pseudo-Proehoros and the iieTaffTaan of St. John and a MartjTdom of St. Simon (different from the docimients generally known under the names of ''Preaching" and "Martyrdom" of that Apostle, and of which short fragments only have been preserved in Coptic). The texts of all these have been pub- lished by Professor I. Guidi in his "Frammenti Copti" (Rendiconti della Reale Accademia del Lincei, III and IV, 1SS7-SS), and "Di alcune pergamene Saidiche" (Rendiconti della R. Ace. del Lincei, Classe di Scienze morali, storiche e filologiche, II, fasc. 7, 1893), and the translations in the same author's "Gli atti apocrifi degli Apostoli" (Giornale della Societa Asiatica Ital- iana, vol. II, pp. 1-66, 1S8S), and in his "Di alcune Pergamene", just mentioned. The same documents have been to no small e.xtent supplemented from St. Petersburg manuscripts by Oscar v. Lemm, in his " Koptische apocryphe Apostelacten" in "Melanges Asiatiques tires du Bulletin de I'Academie imperiale de St Pi'tersbourg", X. 1 and 2 [Bulletin, N. S., I and III (XXXIII and XXXV), 1890-92].

We close this section with the mention of two docu- ments of more than usual interest: first, seven leaves of papyrus (Berlin P. 8502) of the vpa^is ll^rpov and a considerable portion of the Acta Pauli (Heidelberg Copt. PapjTus I), in their original form (i. e. including the so-called " .\cta Pauh et Thecte "). Both of these documents have been published, translated into Ger- man, and thoroughly discussed by C. Schmidt ["Die alten Petrusakten", etc. in "Texte u. LTnters.", N. S., IX (1903); " Acta Pauli ", Leipzig, 1904, 2 vols. (vol. II, photographic reproduction of the Coptic text); 2d edit, (without photographic plates), Leipzig, 1905, 1 vol.].

Patrologij. — Ante-Xicene Fathers. — But few Coptic translations from the Ante-Xicene Fathers have been preserved. As Dr. Leipoldt justly remarks, when the native Church of Egypt began to form its literature, the literary productions of the early Church had lost much of their interest. We have, however, two frag- ments of the letters of Ignatius of Antio"h, published by Pitra (.\nal. sacra, 255 sqq.) and Lightfoot (Apost. Fathers, II, III, London, 1889, 277 sqq.) and several of the "Shepherd" of Hermas, published by Leipoldt (Sitzungsberichte der K. Gesellsch. d. Wissensch. in Berlin, 1903, pp. 261-68), and Delaporte [Revue de I'Orient Chretien, X (1905), pp. 424-33; XI (1906), pp. 31—11], and, what is more, two papyrus codices in Akhmimic dialect, one (Berlin) of the fourth, and the other (Strasburg) of the seventh or eighth century, both containing the first epistle of Clement to the Cor- inthians under its primitive title (Epistle to the Romans). The Berhn codex, which is almost com- plete, has just been published, with a German transla- tion and an exhaustive commentary, by C. Schmidt (Der 1. Clemenslirief in altkoptischer LTeberlieferung untersucht u. herausgegeben, Leipzig, 1908). Ex- tracts from the commentaries of Ilippolytus of Rome, Iren:tus, and Clement of Alexandria are to be found in the famous Bohairic catena (dated a. d. 888) of Lord Zouche's collection (Parham, 102; published by de Lagarde, " Catena in Evangelia ^F^gj'ptiaca quce super- sunt", Gottingcn, 1886). But it is very likely that this manuscript was translated from a Greek catena, and consequently it does not show that the writings of those Fathers existed independently in the Coptic liter- ature. Clement of .\lexandria, in any case, and also Or- igen, were considered as heretics, which would explain their ab.scnce from the repertory of the Coptic Church.

Post-Xicene Fathers. — The homilies, sermons, etc., of the Greek Fathers from the ("oimcil of Xica^a to that of Chalcedon were well represented in theCoptic litera- ture, as we may judge from what has come down to us in the various dialects. In Bohairic we have over forty complete homilies or sermons of St. John Chry.sostom, several of St. Cyril of .Mexandria, St. Gregory Nazian-

zen, Theophilus of Alexandria, and St. Ephraem the Syrian, while in Sahidic we find a few complete writ- ings and a very large number of fragments, some quite considerable, of the homiletieal works of the same Fathers and of many others, like St. Athanasius, St. Basil, Proclus of Cyzicus, Theodotus of Ancyra, Epi- phanius of Cyprus, AmphUochius of Iconium, Severi- anus of Gabala, Cyril of Jerusalem, Eusebius of Caesa- rea, and the pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Libe- rius of Rome and St. Ephraem are also represented by several fragments of sermons. We need not say that these writings are not infrequently spurious, and that they can in no case be held up as models of translation.

The Bohairic part of this great mass of literature is still almost entirely unedited, we might say unexplored. Two sermons of St. Ephraem have been published, one, on the adulterous woman of the Gospel, by Guidi (Bessarione, Ann. VII, vol. IV, Rome, 1903), the other (fragment) on the Transfiguration by Budge (Proceed- ings of the Soc. of Bibl. Archeology, IX, 1887, pp. 317 sqq.). Budge published also a large fragment of an encomium on Elijah the Tishbite attributed to St. John Chrysostom (Transactions of the Soc. Bibl. Arch., IX, 1893, pp. 355 ff.), and Amc^lineau, a sermon of St. Cyril of Alexandria on death (" Monuments pour servir i I'Histoire du Christianisme en Egypte aux IV® et V® siecles — Memoires publics par les Membres de la Mis- sion Arch^ologique Fran(aise au Caire, IV, 1888). As for the Sahidic portion, two homilies of St. John Chrysostom, of doubtful genuineness if not altogether spurious, and all the homiletieal fragments of the Turin museum, were published and translated into Italian by Fr. Rossi in his " Papiri Coptici del Museo Egizio di Torino" (2 vols., Turin, 1887-92), and quite a number of fragments, often unidentifieii. were pub- lished in the catalogues of the various collections of Coptic manuscripts, principally in the catalogue of the Borgian collection by Zoega ("Catalogus codicum copticorum manuscriptorum ", etc., Rome, 1810; Latin translations generally accompany the texts). Among the Sahidic versions of Greek writings of this class and period we must mention, in view of their importance, first, a fragment of the 'A^x^pw^is of St. Epiphanius (J. Leipoldt, "' Epiphanios ' von Salamis 'Ancoratus', in Saidischer LTebersetzung" in "Berichte d. philol.-hist. Klasse d. Gesellsch. d. Wiss. zu Leipzig", 1902); secondly, several fragments of the lost Festal Letters of S. Athanasius (C. Schmidt, " Der Osterbrief des Athanasius vom Jahre 367" in " Nach- richte d. K. Gesellsch. d. Wiss. zu Gottingen, Philol.- Hist. Kl.", 1898; "Ein Neues Fragment des Oster- briefes des Athanasius vom Jahre 367", Ciottingen, 1901; O. v. Lemm, "Zwei koptische Fragmente aus den Festbriefen des heiligen Athanasius" in "Re- cucil des travaux redigi^s en memoire du jubil^ scien- tifique de M. Daniel Chwolson", Berlin, 1899).

Post-Chalcedon Fathers. — Only a few of these had the honour of a place in Coptic literature. The separa- tion of the Church of Egypt from the Catholic world was complete after the deposition of her patriarch Dioscurus (451), and, in spite of the efforts of the Byzantine Court to bring back Egypt to unity by for- cing orthodox pontiffs on her and by other means of coercion, the native Egyptians stubbornly refused their allegiance to the "intruders", and from that time on would have nothing to do with the Greek world, the very name of which became an abomination to them. The chief exception was in favour of the works of Severus, the expelled Monophysite Patriarch of Anti- och, who had taken refuge anil died in Egj'pt. We have a complete encomium of his on St. Slichael, in Bohairic, published by E. A. Wallis Budge ("St. Michael the Archangel: Three Encomiums" etc., Lonilon, 1894), several fragments of homilies in Sahi- dic, and a letter in Bohairic to the Deaconess Anasta- sia (cf. Wright, "Catalogue of Syriac manuscripts in the British Museum", No. DCC'CCL, 10). We may