SYNAXARION, COPTO-ARABIC, List of Saints Used in the Coptic Church
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(CE:2171b-2190a) SYNAXARION, COPTO-ARABIC, list of saints used in the Coptic church. [This entry consists of two articles, Editions of the Synaxarion and The List of Saints.] Editions of the Synaxarion This book, which has become a liturgical book, is very important for the history of the Coptic church. It appears in two forms: the recension from Lower Egypt, which is the quasi-official book of the Coptic church from Alexandria to Aswan, and the recension from Upper Egypt. Egypt has long preserved this separation into two Egypts, Upper and Lower, and this division was translated into daily life through different usages, and in particular through different religious books. This book is the result of various endeavors, of which the Synaxarion itself speaks, for it mentions different usages here or there. It poses several questions that we cannot answer with any certainty: Who compiled the Synaxarion, and who was the first to take the initiative? Who made the final revision, and where was it done? It seems evident that the intention was to compile this book for the Coptic church in imitation of the Greek list of saints, and that the author or authors drew their inspiration from that work, for several notices are obviously taken from the Synaxarion called that of Constantinople. The reader may have recourse to several editions or translations, each of which has its advantages and its disadvantages. Let us take them in chronological order. The oldest translation (German) is that of the great German Arabist F. Wüstenfeld, who produced the edition with a German translation of part of al-Maqrizi's Khitat, concerning the Coptic church, under the title Macrizi's Geschichte der Copten (Göttingen, 1845). He also translated the Synaxarion (without including the Arabic text), but only the first half-year appeared, under the title Synaxarium, das ist Heiligen-Kalender der coptischen Christen (2 vols., Gotha, 1879). He had prepared the second part of the year, but the manuscript remained in the library in Göttingen. Wüstenfeld translated only a single Arabic manuscript in Gotha, dating from 1826 and representing only the recension from Lower Egypt. R. Graffin's Patrologia Orientalis published the Synaxarion in several fascicles with a French translation, under the title Le Synaxaire arabe-jacobite (rédaction copte). Begun in 1904, it was completed in 1929, after the death of its author, R. Basset. It represents a great step forward for our knowledge of the history of the Coptic community, but unfortunately the author, well versed in the Arabic language of the Muslims, was completely unaware of the peculiarities of the language of the Christians of Egypt. Also, misinterpretations are not lacking, to the point that the reader may wonder if Basset had employed a ghost writer. In 1905 the Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium collection—at that time in competition—brought out the Synaxarium alexandrinum, with a Latin translation. While the Patrologia Orientalis edition was based on two manuscripts from the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, one dated by codicologists to the fourteenth century and the other to the seventeenth (restored in the nineteenth), the Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium edition had the great fault of taking as its base a late manuscript, and relegating to notes the variants of six other manuscripts, including those used by Basset. The latter published two manuscripts—especially for the first half-year— amalgamating them without taking account of the fact that they represented two different recensions—so much so that the finished product is a Synaxarion that never existed! In the Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium Forget was more fortunate, for when he began his edition, he noted that the text of Paris Bibliothèque nationale 4869 gave a different recension. He therefore published it separately (vols. 47-48, pp. 291ff). Unfortunately his translation mingled the two recensions; and it, too, fabricated a hybrid Synaxarion that never existed in the manuscripts. We can at least separate the two recensions, for he indicates in the margin the pages of the Arabic text. If the page is 291 or beyond, the reader who has been warned will know that it is the Sahidic recension. The translation errors are less frequent, and the number of manuscripts used is greater; but here, as in Basset's edition, there was no serious analysis of the manuscripts of the Synaxarion beforehand. In particular, the manuscripts deposited in Egypt had not been consulted. In 1935-1937 there was an edition at Cairo, without a translation into a European language, made by two qummus (a special rank in the Coptic Church, superior to the simple priest, and a title given also to the abbots of monasteries, deriving from the Greek HEGUMENOS), ‘Abd al-Masih Mikha’il and Armaniyus Habashi Shita al-Birmawi. This was based—according to the preface—on several Egyptian manuscripts, enumerated below, and on the Paris edition. It has the advantage of adding to the manuscripts of the Synaxarion some notices, taken from other sources that are not named, concerning certain recent patriarchs or saints who are not found in the manuscripts of the Synaxarion—for example, saints Dimyanah, Macrobius, Pshoi, and Petrus, whose relics are still the object of a pilgrimage to Sidfa. The authors suppressed what appeared to them worthless or unseemly. Although this edition is precious because it uses manuscripts unknown in Europe, one cannot trust it completely, since its choice remains arbitrary. There is, thus, no totally reliable edition, and each has its advantages and its limitations. These editions ignore the true calendar indicating which saint is to be celebrated on each day. Such a calendar was found in most of the manuscripts of the Qatamarus. The 1900-1902 edition of the annual Qatamarus, completed later for Lent, Holy Week, and the Pentecostal season (the period between Easter and Pentecost), gives this calendar, indicating by a rubric which saint or which New Testament event is to be commemorated, whereas the Synaxarion offered the faithful all the saints known to the authors. If the development of the printing press caused these printed editions of both the Synaxarion and the Lectionary to become the quasi-official editions in use everywhere in Egypt, this diffusion does not put an end to possible contradictions. Through their formation, local usage, which has become that of all Egypt, may retain a saint or event in the Lectionary that is unknown in the Synaxarion and vice versa. The reader who wishes information about the cult of a saint of the Coptic church therefore must have recourse to several editions, each with its lacunae and its unique information. One must also take account of the fact that some local or ancient saints have not found a place in the Synaxarion or the Lectionary. Some Egyptian saints retained as such by the Greek books, liturgical or historical, are unknown to the Coptic books. BIBLIOGRAPHY ‘Abd al-Masih Mikhail and Armanyus Habashi Shita al-Birmawi. Al-Sinaksar, 2 vols. Cairo 1935-1937. Malan, S. C. The Calendar of the Coptic Church. Original Documents of the Coptic Church, 2. London, 1873. Wüstenfeld, H. F. Macrizi's Geschichte der Copten. Göttigen, 1845. RENÉ-GEORGES COQUIN The List of Saints Synaxarion is the Coptic and Greek term for the Latin synaxarium, and is a formal compilation of the lives of the martyrs, saints, and religious heroes of the Coptic church. These biographies are sometimes reduced to a mere citation of each martyr or saint read in the course of the liturgy, after excerpts from the Acts (ABRAXOS) during the morning service on the day of the passion of each. This is usually presented in the form of an encomium or homily for the edification of the congregation. The development of the martyr cult in the Coptic church dates from the early centuries, when those encomiums were read in both Sahidic and Bohairic (from the beginning of the Middle Ages), and in Arabic (after the ARAB CONQUEST OF EGYPT). In most cases, these biographies were translated into Arabic from Greek and Coptic originals. Furthermore, the current Arabic text includes a limited number of extraneous entries besides these biographies, in which certain notable events are commemorated on given dates, such as the Crucifixion, the feasts and fasts of the church, the apparition of an archangel or the Virgin Mary, the Coptic New Year, the dedication of a historic church, and so on. But the bulk of the work remains dedicated to the saints and martyrs whose cult became embedded in church traditions. Until the fourteenth century, the lives of these holy men and women were read separately, in independent encomiums, on their passion days. Ultimately they were assembled in a single book, an operation primarily associated with Anba Butrus al-Jamil, bishop of Malij, though others are known to have participated in this task, including Anba Mikha’il, bishop of Atrib, and Anba Yuhanna, bishop of Parallos (Burullus). At later dates, however, names of other holy men appeared in the fourteenth-century Arabic text, such as Anba Abraham, bishop of Fayyum, in modern times. The present recension of the Arabic Synaxarion, approved by the church authority and read throughout the Coptic church, has been compiled from a number of older manuscripts, of which some are directly ascribed to Anba Butrus, bishop of Malij. They are the following: 1. Three manuscripts in the patriarchal library, the oldest of which is dated 1114 A.M./A.D. 1398, which could be contemporary with Anba Butrus. 2. Two copies in the Coptic Museum Library, one of which is dated 1056 A.M./A.D. 1340 and must have been from the time of Anba Butrus. The other is dated 1450 A.M./A.D.