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604 progress of the Turks was arrested; the doom of Constantinople was postponed; Jerusalem was ruled by a Christian king for nearly a century, and Syria by Christian princes more or less for two hundred years. But all this brought no advantage to the Copts. In regard to the pilgrimages they were even worse off than before. Hitherto, while they had to take their chance of rough treatment equally with other Christians, the Copts had also free access to the holy sites, since Islam was scornfully indifferent to the rivalry of the Christian sects. But when Jerusalem was in the hands of the Latins, although the masters of the city were graciously willing to admit a comparative orthodoxy in the creed of the Greek Church, in common with that Church they treated the Monophysite Copts as heretics, and forbade them access to the Holy City. Thus "Jerusalem delivered" was barred against the national Church of Egypt by the Christian powers of Europe. The Copts had to wait for the recovery of Palestine by the Saracens before they could renew their pilgrimages to the tomb of Christ.

The Coptic patriarch at the time of the first Crusade was Chail, who had signed a document promising to abolish simony and renounce certain irksome claims of his predecessors, as a condition of his appointment when a monk in a convent near Sinjara. No sooner was he in power than he repudiated his pledge, threatening excommunication on any one who should bring it up against him. He even procured a synod's sentence of excommunication against Chenouda, the bishop of Misr, who had taken the lead in the simony question. It cannot but strike us as deplorable that, when the Crusades were beginning in a passion of religious enthusiasm, and when the Christians of the West were opening up long-closed communications with the East, the Coptic Church in Egypt should be represented by so unworthy a patriarch as this Chail.

The policy of the Crusaders revived for a time the flickering flame of the Melchite patriarchate, which was then held by Cyril, a prelate who was celebrated both as a