C. 600) Texts and Contexts*
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A CIRCLE OF EGYPTIAN BISHOPS AT THE END OF ROMAN RULE (C. 600) Texts and Contexts* 1. Introduction It is perhaps not unfair to suggest that such persons as John of Paralos, Constantine of Assiut, and John of Hermopolis are far from well-known to late antique historians1. But each of these persons belongs to a wider episcopal circle which is witnessed in a striking range of extant media: in manuscripts, in documents, and even in some artefacts. The mem- bers of that circle all operated during the tenure of the Severan Damian of Alexandria (577-c. 606)2, of whom Damian’s extant biography, as now contained in the History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, states the following: There were in his [Damian’s] epoch some people of miracle, bishops, who were admired because of their pureness and holiness. Among them [was] John of Burlus and John his pupil. And Constantine the Bishop [of Assiut] and John the blessed Enkleistos [of Hermopolis], and others with him who were taking care of the vineyard of the Lord of Sabaoth3. * I would like to thank Marek Jankowiak and Elisabeth O’Connell for their comments, and Johannes den Heijer and Perrine Pilette for their corrections to the text, and expertise on the History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria. 1 Note that I do not attempt to be consistent between Greek and Coptic toponyms when attached to different bishops, but offer the name which is most embedded in modern scholarship e.g. Constantine of Assiut rather than Constantine of Lykopolis, but Abraham of Hermonthis rather than Abraham of Ermant. 2 For Damian’s dates see the discussion of JÜLICHER, Die Liste, p. 20-22. Ibid., p. 14- 15 hesitates between late 607 to December 619 and late 606 to December 618 for the dates of Damian’s successor Anastasius, but since the History of the Patriarchs has him dead before the Persian invasion (618-619), the latter range seems preferable. In this case Damian’s tenure was around twenty-nine years, and the inflated thirty-six year tenure presented in normative Egyptian sources – e.g. History of the Patriarchs (Primitive Recen- sion), p. 92 and the Chronicon Orientale, ed. CHEIKO, p. 120 –, in combination with the one or two years added to the tenure of Theodosius (JÜLICHER, Die Liste, p. 15-16, 20), is no doubt designed to correct or to disguise the nine-year interregnum following Theodosius’ death. 3 وكان في زمانه اناس تعجب اساقفة :History of the Patriarchs (Primitive Recension), p. 92 تعجب من طهارتهم وقدسهم. منهن يوحنا البرلسى ويوحنا تلميده. وقسطنطين الاسقف ويوحنا المغبوط The first sentence is ambiguous and might اكلسيطس واخرين معه مهتمين بكرم الرب الصباووت. instead be translated: ‘There were in his [Damian’s] epoch some people admired by the bishops, who admired their pureness and holiness.’ I am grateful to Perrine Pilette for this يوحنا المغبوط point. Note that History of the Patriarchs (Vulgate Recension), II, p. 477, lacks Le Muséon 131 (1-2), 21-72. doi: 10.2143/MUS.131.1.3284834 - Tous droits réservés. © Le Muséon, 2018. 22 P. BOOTH The decision to name and to celebrate these collaborators of the patriarch is striking enough, not least because it is unparalleled within these sections of the text. But still more striking is the fact that three of the persons here named – though not, it seems, ‘John his pupil’4 – are the alleged authors of extant texts. A diverse range of evidence allows us, moreover, to place within this episcopal circle several further persons whose texts now survive in one form or another: in particular, Rufus of Shotep, Pesynthius of Koptos, and Abraham of Hermonthis5. A range of learned studies has now illuminated the biographies, texts, and contexts of Damian and his bishops, although much within their output still remains unpublished6. But the results of the various enquiries are scattered in diverse publications, and existing summaries do not set out the full range of evidence7. In addition to providing the reader with a more comprehensive guide to the careers and corpora of the members of the circle, I want also here to understand the implications of this evident explosion in textual produc- tion. Our bishops are, in effect, amongst the pioneers of a new church first created under Peter IV, Damian’s predecessor (575-577), following the effective collapse of the Severan episcopate in Egypt in the four decades from 536-575. Elsewhere I have examined the structural formation of this new church, as the patriarch Damian attempted both to establish his as if it were a name, ‘Cleistus’. The Arabic however seems to اكلسيطس and translates be a corruption of Greek/Coptic ἔγκλειστος i.e. ‘hermit’, a title which thus attaches to ‘the blessed John’; see MASPERO, Graeco-Arabica; followed in GARITTE, Constantin, p. 297 n. 3. For this John see below p. 38-39. 4 This person is perhaps the ‘John’ whom Michael the Great, Chronicle 10.26, ed. CHABOT, IV, p. 397, presents, in the context of the union of 617, as a former monk of Aphthonia (Qenneshre) and the notarios (ܐܪܛܢ) of Damian – like his predecessor Peter, therefore, Damian had employed a Syrian monastic as his secretary, and one from the arch-Jacobite community of Qenneshre. According to the Chronicle, the Egyptians called this John ‘apostle’ (ܐܚܝܠܫ). 5 Note that I do not consider here such authors as Isaac bishop of Antinoe (author of a Coptic Encomium on Saint Colluthus [Isaac of Antinoe, Encomium on St Coluthus, ed. THOmPSON]); Stephen bishop of Hnes/Heracleopolis Magna (author of a Coptic Enco- mium on Apollo Archimandrite [Stephen of Hnes, Encomium on Apollo Archimandrite, ed. KUHN] and another Encomium on St Elijah [Stephen of Hnes, Encomium on St Elijah, ed. SOHBY]); and Basil bishop of Pemje/Oxyrhynchus (author of a Coptic Encomium on Longinus [Basil of Pemje, Encomium on Longinus, ed. DEPUYdT]). These authors are sometimes placed in the period of Damian, but the dating is speculative and therefore insecure. 6 In particular those parts of their output now extant in Arabic. I have endeavoured here to include all the Arabic texts mentioned in published catalogues accessible to me. But the number of manuscript witnesses, and of texts, will no doubt expand as more Egyptian collections are catalogued. 7 E.g. ORLANdI, Elementi, p. 97-106; Id., Coptic Literature, p. 75-77; Id., Letteratura copta, p. 113-120; MÜLLER, Die koptische Kirche, p. 292-302. A CIRCLE OF EGYPTIAN BISHOPS 23 position in relation to the Severan churches elsewhere, and to determine the hierarchical shape and social location of his new domestic episco- pate8. But here I will also use the texts which Damian and his bishops produced to explore their political and cultural preoccupations as a dis- senting church on the eve of Islam. A series of excellent recent studies has examined the connections between religious dissent, ecclesial and ethnic formation, and language use elsewhere in the contemporaneous Near and Middle East, in particular in relation to Syria and to Syriac Chris- tianity9; but comparable studies on Egypt have been slower to appear, despite the richness of material10. As we shall see, certain methodo- logical caveats must restrain our appreciation of the Egyptian evidence based upon its language and its content. But the existence of the litera- ture in itself manifests and expresses a radical moment of institutional and cultural change, a moment at which nothing less than a new church came into being. 2. Damian of Alexandria In 1883 Gaston Maspero removed from Western Thebes to Cairo a remarkable piece of writing: the synodical letter of the patriarch Damian of Alexandria, painted on the plastered walls of a monastic complex estab- lished, in the late sixth century, around the Tomb of Daga in the ancient Theban necropolis11. The Christian ascetics who inhabited this site – which moderns are wont to call ‘the Monastery of Epiphanius’, after the archive of the archimandrite discovered there – had inscribed upon its walls a series of extensive doctrinal quotations, in Coptic and Greek, which a visi- tor encountered as he or she passed from the complex’s gate to an inner vestibule12. Within that vestibule our visitor entered a veritable cocoon of dogmatic texts. For here were once inscribed upon the walls, in Greek, quotations from Athanasius’ anti-Arian Letter to the Monks and the famous 8 BOOTH, Towards the Coptic Church. 9 See e.g. MENZE, Justinian; TANNOUS, Syria; WOOd, “We have no king”; TER HAAR ROmENY et al., Formation of a Communal Identity; TER HAAR ROmENY, Ethnicity, Ethno- genesis; MILLAR, Evolution. 10 For an important contribution cf. however PAPACONSTANTINOU, Historiography, Hagiography. 11 For the establishment of the site see WINLOCK – CRUm, Monastery of Epiphanius, vol. 1, esp. p. 98-103. For the phenomenon of ascetic colonisation of pharaonic tombs in the region see e.g. BEHLmER, Christian Use of Pharaonic Sacred Space; O’CONNELL, Transforming Monumental Landscapes. 12 See the reconstruction of the sequence in MACCOULL, Prophethood, Texts and Artifacts. 24 P. BOOTH twelve anathemas of Cyril of Alexandria13; in Coptic, three citations from Severus of Antioch14; and, in Coptic, four more citations, at least one of which seems again to be from Cyril of Alexandria15. Taken together, these expound a traditional, Nicene conception of the Trinity and a con- spicuous miaphysite Christology – insisting, for example, on the one nature of the God-man and on the Son as single subject, and criticising those who introduce division into Christ. The entire inscribed space, therefore, attempts to communicate the timelessness of an anti-Chalcedonian con- sensus, and to inculcate the observer within it16. Before arriving at this vestibule, however, the visitor first passed through an anteroom which contained perhaps the most impressive of the complex’s inscriptions: the Synodical Letter of Damian, presented in seven columns, of which three are extant, of Coptic text17.