Page:Lesser Eastern Churches.djvu/245

Rh years the Copts felt the weight of that same arm which was crushing their old opponents the Nestorians. Chosroes II was a bitter persecutor of all Christians. Churches were destroyed, monks massacred, nuns ravished. These years of Persian oppression were a bitter foretaste of the long Moslem persecution, now soon to begin. When the Persians withdrew, the Copts were again able to elect a Patriarch. They chose a monk Benjamin (620-659). In his time occurred the union of many Copts to the Orthodox, achieved by the Melkite Patriarch Cyrus, on the basis of Monotheletism (p. 210). Benjamin, as a staunch Monophysite, refused to accept the Monothelete compromise and fled to Upper Egypt. "For Heraclius the misbeliever had charged them (his soldiers), saying: 'If anyone says that the Council of Chalcedon is true, let him go; but drown in the sea those that say it is erroneous and false.' ... Then Heraclius appointed bishops throughout the land of Egypt, as far as the city of Antinoe, and tried the inhabitants or Egypt with hard trials, and like a ravening wolf devoured the reasonable flock, and was not satiated. And this blessed people who were thus presecuted were the Theodosians." Then in 639 came the victorious Arabs.

2. The Arab Conquest of Egypt (639)

That the True Believers, in the first impulse of their victorious career, swept irresistibly over Persia, Syria and Egypt is well known. During the first century or so after the Prophet's death (632) no one could withstand them. They crushed every army sent by the Emperor or the Great King, made all Persia Moslem, and tore from the empire its richest provinces. In December 639 'Amr, fresh from the conquest of Syria, invaded Egypt. He overran the whole country, defeated the Romans in three pitched battles, besieged and took the city Babylon, on the right bank of the Nile, in 640, and Alexandria in 641. By the winter of 641-642 Egypt was part of the Khalifs domain, the army of 'Amr was