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Introduction

The Coptic Orthodox Church is one of the most ancient Churches of the world, having been founded by Saint Mark the Apostle. A conservative Church, it has carefully preserved the orthodox Christian Faith in its earliest and purest form, handing it down from generation to generation, unaltered and true to the Apostolic doctrines and patterns of worship.

The Coptic Church is a deeply spiritual Church, emphasising holiness and the Divine Mysteries, and at the same time, a strongly doctrinal Church, holding faithfully to the canons of the Holy Scriptures, the Apostolic and Orthodox creeds, and the teachings of the Church Fathers of the first three ecumenical councils. The Coptic Church has stood firm and remained faithful to the Apostolic Traditions and Orthodox Faith, despite waves of the most fearful persecutions under pagan Roman Emperors, Byzantine and Arab rulers, and in the face of serious heresies which attacked the very essence of the Christian Faith and threatened to split the Church and all of Christendom.

The Copts are the native Christians of Egypt and the direct descendants of the ancient Egyptians, a people with perhaps the longest recorded history. The word 'Copt' is derived from `gypt' which stems from the Greek word Aigyptos' meaning `Egyptian'.

1. Egypt in the Holy Bible

In the Holy Bible, Egypt was a land of refuge, especially in times of famine. Abraham visited Egypt, so did Joseph, who became Pharoah's deputy. Jacob and his twelve sons came and dwelt in Egypt where they became a nation. Jeremiah the Prophet also visited Egypt.

The crown of these visits, however, was the Holy Family's visit during the childhood of our Lord, who travelled from Sinai in the East to the valley of Nitria in the West, and southwards to Assyut, the heart of Upper Egypt.

Many miracles took place in Egypt during the visit of the Holy Family. Many places were blessed, and on the places where the Holy Family lived, churches were later built, and are visited by pilgrims from all over the world. Thus the land of Egypt was blessed by the visit of our Lord, being the only country other than His birthland to be visited by Him, in fulfillment of the prophecy: "Behold the Lord rides on a swift cloud, and will come into Egypt; the idols of Egypt will totter at His presence, and the heart of Egypt will melt in its midst" (Isaiah 19:1 ).

Saint Cyril the Great interpreted this prophesy, saying: "The `swift cloud' which carried the Child Jesus to Egypt, was His mother, the Virgin Saint Mary, who surpassed the cloud in purity. The altar which was established in the midst of the land of Egypt is the Christian Church which replaced the pagan temples as the idols collapsed and the temples became deserted in the presence of the Lord Jesus".

During the twentieth century also, the Coptic Church has been blessed by the appasition of the Virgin Saint Mary in her Church at Zeitoun in Cairo in 1968, in the Church of Saint Demyana in the Cairo suburb of Shoubra in 1986, and in various other places, thus fulfilling the words of the Scriptures:


SAINT MARK & THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SEE OF ALEXANDRIA

2. Saint Mark

Saint Mark the Evangelist, one of the seventy disciples, and the writer of one of the four Gospels, was born in Libya three years after the birth of Christ. He was of Jewish parents who later moved to Palestine. Saint Mark's house was where the Lord used to meet with His Apostles, and where He celebrated the Passover with them. In his house also the Apostles were gathered when the Holy Spirit descended on the Day of Pentecost. Thus, the house of Saint Mark is well known in all Apostolic Churches, as the first church in the world.

3. His First Mission to Egypt

When Saint Mark entered and walked through the streets of Alexandria, the most famous city in Egypt, his sandals were torn. While Ananias the cobbler was mending Saint Mark's shoes, his finger was cut from the awl and he cried out: "O the one god!" Saint Mark healed the cobbler's finger and spoke to him about who the "One God" really was. Ananias invited Saint Mark to his home where he and his household were baptised after having professed their belief in the Christian Faith. Soon afterwards, many others believed and Ananias's house became the meeting place for the faithful.

In 62 AD, Saint Mark decided to leave Egypt to visit the new believers he had preached in the Pentapolis. Before leaving, he ordained Ananias as bishop. He also founded a church in the Crypt where the Holy Family had taken refuge, thus fulfilling the prophesy of Isaiah: "In that day there will be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar to the Lord at its border... Then the Lord will be known to Egypt, and the Egyptians will know the Lord in that day" (Isaiah 19:19,21).

4. His Second Mission and Martyrdom

When Saint Mark returned to Egypt, after the martyrdom of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, he found that the Church had grown so much that he ordained three priests and seven deacons to help Ananias. Saint Mark preached for another seven years against the local pagan gods with such vigor that the feeling of hatred against him became intense. At that time, three races were dwelling in Egypt: the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Jews, in addition to a few Romans. Serapis was the god of the Greeks in Egypt; he was the god of Alexandria. On Easter Day in 68 AD, Saint Mark was administering the Holy Liturgy, and on the same day, the pagans were celebrating the feast of Serapis, the god of Alexandria. Encouraged by the Roman prefect, the pagans rushed and attacked the church where Saint Mark and the faithful were praying. They captured Saint Mark, tied a rope around him and dragged him through the streets of the city. At night he was thrown intoprison where an angel appeared to him, strengthening and encouraging him. On the following day he was dragged again through the streets and martyred. Saint Mark is considered the first of the unbroken line of Patriarchs of the Coptic Church; His Holiness Pope Shenouda III, the present patriarch, being Saint Mark's 116th' successor- the 1 17th` Pope of Alexandria. The full official title of the Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church is `Pope and Patriarch of the great city of Alexandria, the Middle East, Ethiopia, Nubia and the Pentapolis'.


HISTORY

• Church of Martyrs
• Waves of Persecution
• The Schism
• The Arab Conquest

By the end of the second century, Christianity was well established in Egypt, although pockets of paganism continued to co-exist with the new Faith. By 190 AD, the Church of Alexandria was exchanging Paschal epistles with the Churches of Jerusalem and Antioch concerning the date of Easter, and there were about forty dioceses under the Patriarch of Alexandria, in the north of the country, in the Delta area. By 202 AD, there were also Christians in the whole Thebaid, in Upper Egypt, 800 km up the Nile Valley. In his Festal letters, Saint Athanasius mentioned that there were also Christians in the small and large oases in the heart of the desert.

Church of Martyrs

Historians have named the Coptic Church the `Church of the Martyrs', not only because of their great number, but also because of their desire for martyrdom. When prevented from worship, they did not hide in the catacombs, but worshipped openly. Many went from place to place, seeking the crown of martyrdom, not considering it death, but rather, as entry into the new life.

Waves of Persecution

The first wave of persecution took place in the first century when the Apostle Saint Mark suffered martyrdom in Alexandria by the pagan Egyptians. Commencing from 202 AD and continuing for seven yeass, the Coptic Church also suffered persecution under the reign of Septimus Severus, who, when he visited Egypt and found that Christianity had spread, ordered the ruler to increase the persecution and prevent preaching at any cost. Consequently, the School of Alexandria was closed and its dean, Saint Clement, was compelled to flee.

During the reign of the Roman Emperor Decus, an edict was issued to re-establish the state religion by any means. In 257 and 258 AD, Emperor Valerian issued edicts to destroy the Church, leading to the arrest and exile of Pope Dionesius of Alexandria. In 302 AD, the Roman Emperor Diocletian began his persecution of the Christians by dismissing from the army every soldier who refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods. On 23 February of the following year, he issued his famous edict against the Christians. It was his belief that if he could crush Christianity in Egypt, it would be easier illiminating it from the rest of the world. Hence the persecution of the Christians in Egypt was more intense than in any other country - about 800,000 men, women and children were martyred in Egypt. For this reason, the Coptic
Church determined to start its calendar from the year of Diocletian's assession to the throne in 248 AD, calling the calendar `Anno Martyrii', meaning, `Of the Martyrs'

Throughout these waves of persecution, many spiritual leaders devoted themselves to strengthening the martyrs and confessors, visiting them in prisons, and accompanying them in their trials, and even to the place of execution. Some of them cared for and buried the saints' bodies, and wrote the biography of their trials and martyrdom as eye- witnesses, calling their accounts, `The Acts of the Martyrs'.

Among the famous martyrs were Saint Mena the Wonder worker, Saint Reflca and her five children, Saint Catherine, and the Thebean Legion (numbering almost seven thousand soldiers) who, led by Saint Maurice, refused to sacrifice to the gods and were all martyred in Switzerland. The list of the martyrs of the Coptic Orthodox Church is endless.

The Schism

In the fifth century, an archimandrite of a monastery near Constantinople named Eutyches began to spread a new heresy, denying the human nature of Christ, saying that His body was but an ethereal body which passed through the womb of the Virgin Saint Mary.

Subsequently, a local Council was convened by seven bishops, led by Flavianus, Bishop of Constantinople, and supported by the Tome (exposition of the Dogma) of Leo I, Bishop of Rome, which condemned Eutyches as a heretic. Eutyches appealed to all the bishops of Christendom, as well as to Emperor Theodosius the Younger, with the resutt that a second council of Ephesus was held in 449 AD, attended by 130 bishops, under the presidency of Pope Dioscorus of Alexandria, together with Juvenal of Jerusalem and Domnus of Antioch. Eutyches submitted a full written confession, affirming the Nicene Creed, and was found to be
Orthodox, thus was acquitted. The bishops who had passed a verdict on Eutyches, based on Leo's Tome, were excommunicated. Later however, Eutyches proclaimed his heresy once again, and this time he was condemned and excommunicated by a local Coptic council.

Two years later, in AD 451, another Council was convened by Emperor Marcianus at Chalcedon. This Council was characterised by political faetors, shameful prejudices and conspiracies against the Church of Alexandria and against its patriarch, Pope Dioscorus.

Alexandria was merely a city under the rule of the Eastern Roman Empire whose capital was Constantinople, Rome being the capital of the Western Roman Empire. Nonetheless, the patriarchs and popes of Alexandria played a leading role in theology in the first centuries of Christianity. Others envied them and began to put them in trouble, saying that the Church of Alexandria had nothing to do but to collect bishops for ecumenical councils and preside over these councils.

At the Council of Chalcedon, the Coptic Church was misquoted and its teachings were wrongly deemed as being Eutychean. The Patriarch of Alexandria was accused of being Eutychean, because he had presided over the second Council of Ephesus which had absolved Eutyches, although a later Coptic council had condemned the teachings of Eutyches, and despite the proved Orthodoxy of Pope Dioscorus who, in defending his Orthodox Faith, gave his famous analogy:

"If a piece of iron, heated to white heat, be struck on an anvil, and although the iron and the heat form an indivisible whole, it is the iron which receives the blows and not the white heat. This unity of the iron and the white heat is symbolic of our Saviour's Incarnation, whose Divinity never parted from His Humanity, not even for a moment, nor the twinkling of an eye. Yet though His Divinity parted not from His Humanity, their union was without mixing or fusion, or change, like unto the union of the iron and white heat. This unity is defined as 'the One Nature of God the Logos Incarnate' and is synonymous with Saint John's saying, `The Word became flesh'. As for me, I steadfastly uphold the Faith of the Orthodox Church, the one, holy, Universal and Apostolic Church. Neither Eutyches, nor any other person, can make me swerve from this holy Faith".

When Pope Dioscorus' Orthodoxy could not be questioned, other accusations were raised, centring around material issues such as the question of preventing Egyptian corn from being sent to other parts of the Empire. Neither Pope Dioscorus nor the civil judges were present when the council handed down the verdict deposing him, mainly for having excommunicated the bishop of Rome and not appearing at the Council session when summoned three times, although he was under house arrest at the time. Because of his Orthodoxy, Pope Dioscorus could neither be degraded of Ecclesiastic honour nor excommunicated.

In a later session of the Council, at which the Egyptian delegation was not present, the supremacy of the Church of Constantinople and Rome was granted over the Church of Alexandria. The Egyptian Church was labelled as'monophysite', because of its emphasis upon the 'One Nature of Christ' (although this title was misinterpreted as covering either one of the Human or Divine natures of our Lord and ignoring the other), being based on the assumption that the Coptic Fathers accepted the Eutychean view.

Historical facts, and the liturgy and doctrines of the Coptic Church, however, prove the Orthodoxy of the Coptic Church, until this day. Furthermore, it is now admitted by those who once accused the Coptic Church of being monophysite that it was a misunderstanding arising from a problem of semantics, the Coptic Church now being referred to as `miaphysite', that is, recognising both natures of our Lord being joined inseparably in the `One Nature of God the Logos Incarnate.'

In the absence of the representation of the Church of Alexandria, the Council of Chalcedon passed statements concerning the two natures of Christ, and ecclesiastic laws, which have not been accepted, to this day, by the Coptic Orthodox Church and the other ancient Churches such as the Syrian Orthodox, the Armenian Apostolic, the Ethiopian Orthodox and the Indian Orthodox Churches. Therefore, the Council of Chalcedon resulted in the first major schism of the undivided Christian Church. Today, however, most scholars have agreed that the unfortunate events and decisions at the Council of Chalcedon were based upon misunderstandings and a misintetpretation of terms and words, rather than a question of Orthodoxy, and agreement has now been reached on the Nature of Christ.

The events of the Council,however, were to have a long, far reaching effect upon the Coptic Church, which suffered greatly at the hands of the Chalcedonian rulers, and from this time onwards, remained isolated from the rest of the Christian World until the 20th Century.

Pope Dioscorus was exiled to the island of Gangra, off the coast of Asia Minor, where he died. During his exile, he led many to the Christian Faith and bought back numerous heretics to Orthodoxy. In his See in Alexandria, a Melkite (Greek) Patriarch was imposed, but was not accepted by the people of Alexandria, who preferred to remain loyal to their exiled Patriarch. A wave of persecution arose in which an estimated 30,000 people lost their lives. The non-Chalcedonian Coptic Church continued to suffer persecution at the hands of the Byzantine rulers, and the rift within the Apostolic Churches widened.

For a period of almost 150 years, under the rule of nine Byzantine emperors, Egypt experienced periods of fluctuating peace and oppression. However, after the death of Emperor Anastasius, an era of Byzantine persecution and oppression began, lasting for almost 120 years. During this period, patriarchs were banished, intruders were placed on the Patriarchal See, churches were destroyed, and people lost both their lives and possessions. Emperor Justinian closed all the churches, placing guards on them, and persecution against the Coptic Church continued. As a result, Egypt was reduced to an impoverished state while the rest of the Byzantine world enjoyed luxury, freedom and wealth.

The Arab Conquest

When Islam entered Egypt, Pope Benjamin I, the 38th Patriarch, had been away from his throne for 13 years, another Patriarch having been ordained in his place and given all the churches, in order to have the authority to get rid of the Copts, the `Monophysites' .

For the four centuries that followed the Arab conquest of Egypt, the Coptic Church generally flourished and Egypt remained basically Christian. This was due to a large extent to the fortunate position that the Copts enjoyed, for the Prophet of Islam preached a special kindness towards Copts: "When you conquer Egypt, be kind to the Copts for they are your proteges and kith and kin." The Copts, therefore, were allowed to freely practice Christianity provided they continued to pay a special tax, called `Gezya', that would qualify them as `Ahl Zemma' proteges (protected). Individuals who could not afford to pay the levy were faced with the choice of either converting to Islam or losing their civil right to be `protected', which in some instances meant being killed. Despite additional costly laws that were imposed on them in 750-868 AD and 905-935 AD, under the Abbasid Dynasties, the Copts prospered and the Coptic Church enjoyed one of its most peaceful eras.

Throughout that period, the Coptic language remained the language of Egypt, and it was not until the second half of the eleventh century that the first bilingual Coptic-Arabic liturgical manuscripts began to appear. The adoption of the Arabic language as the language used in Egyptians' everyday life was so slow that even in the l5th century the Coptic language was still largely in use. Up to this day, the Coptic language continues to be the liturgical language of the Church.

The Christian face of Egypt started to change by the beginning of the second millennium AD when the Copts, in addition to the `Gezya' levy, suffered from specific limitations, some of which were serious and interfered with their freedom of worship. For example, there were restrictions on repairing old churches and building new ones, on testifying in court, on public conduct, on adoption, on inheritance, on public religious activities, and on dress codes. Slowly but steadily, by the end of the l2th century, the face of Egypt changed from being a predominantly Christian to a predominantly Muslim country. The Coptic community occupied an inferior position and lived in some expectation of Muslim hostility, whichperiodically flared into violence.

The position of the Copts began to improve early in the 19th century under the stability and tolerance of the Mohammed Ali dynasty. The Coptic community ceased to be regarded by the state as an administrative unit. In 1855 AD, the main mark of the Copt's inferiority, namely the `Gezya' tax, was lifted. Shortly thereafter, the Copts started to serve in the. Egyptian army. The 1919 AD revolution in Egypt witnesses to the harmony of Egypt's modern society. Today, it is this harmony which keeps the Egyptian society united against the religious intolerance of extremist groups, who inflict upon the Copts persecution, terror and violence.

Despite persecution, the Coptic Church has never been controlled, or a.llowed itself to control, the governments of Egypt. This position of the Church concerning the separation between State and Religion stems from the words of our Lord Himself, Who says, "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God 's " (Matthew 22:21 ). The Coptic Church has never forcefully resisted authorities or invaders and was never allied with any power, for the words of our Lord are clear: "Put your sword in its place, for all who take by the sword will perish by the sword" (Matthew 26:52).