Booth 2018 A Circle of Egyptian Bishops

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
History of the Patriarchs (Primitive Recension), p. 92: ‫وكان في زمانه اناس تعجب اساقفة‬
‫ وقسطنطين الاسقف ويوحنا المغبوط‬.‫ منهن يوحنا البرلسى ويوحنا تلميده‬.‫تعجب من طهارتهم وقدسهم‬
.‫ اكلسيطس واخرين معه مهتمين بكرم الرب الصباووت‬The first sentence is ambiguous and might
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
point. Note that History of the Patriarchs (Vulgate Recension), II, p. 477, lacks ‫يوحنا المغبوط‬
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
and translates ‫ اكلسيطس‬as if it were a name, ‘Cleistus’. The Arabic however seems to
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 (‫ )ܢܛܪܐ‬of 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’ (‫)ܫܠܝܚܐ‬.
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. The original
Greek letter does not survive18, but a witness contained within the Syr-
iac Chronicle of Michael the Great, cited from the lost history of Cyrus of
Batna, no doubt derives from the same text, even if the two versions contain
various minor differences19. In the letter Damian announces his appoint-
ment, before setting out a confession of faith which is notable for its sus-
tained refutation of tritheism and assertion of miaphysitism, and which
includes an explicit condemnation of dyophysitism, aphthartism, and agnoet-
ism20. Throughout the letter – and thus also the inscription – Damian invokes
various patristic witnesses to his own position, including both Cyril of
Alexandria and Severus of Antioch. Within the monastic complex of
Epiphanius, therefore, the organisation of inscribed space served to rein-
force Damian’s claims to continuity with, and authority over, the patristic
past by framing the extensive citations contained in the subsequent ves-
tibule within the context of the patriarch’s synodical thought, and at that
13
See P.Mon.Epiph. 585-586.
14
See Winlock – Crum, Monastery of Epiphanius, vol. 2, Appendix I, D-F (p. 337-
340). Crum’s E and F are identified as coming from Severus’ cathedral homilies in Lucchesi,
L’homélie cathédrale CXV de Sévère; and Id., L’homélie cathédrale II de Sévère.
15
See Winlock – Crum, Monastery of Epiphanius, vol. 2, Appendix I, G-J (p. 340-
341).
16
Cf. MacCoull, Prophethood, Texts and Artifacts, p. 316; also van der Vliet,
Epigraphy and History, esp. p. 151-152.
17
See Winlock – Crum, Monastery of Epiphanius, vol. 2, Appendix (p. 148-152),
Appendix A-C (p. 331-337), and Plate XV.
18
On Damian’s language and the continued use of Greek in official correspondence
see e.g. Müller, Damian, Papst, p. 130; more broadly, Mikhail, From Byzantine to Islamic
Egypt, p. 84-91.
19
Michael the Great, Chronicle 10.14, ed. Chabot, IV, p. 325-334. Note that there is
a second Syriac witness in Peter of Callinicum’s Contra Damianum; see below n. 23.
20
For these doctrines see below p. 51. For the doctrinal content see Grillmeier –
Hainthaler, Christ in Christian Tradition, vol. 2/4, p. 75-77.
same time investing that thought with a canonical status equivalent to the
pronouncements of the greatest anti-Chalcedonian luminaries.
There seems little doubt that the inscription of the letter occurred within,
or soon after, Damian’s lifetime, perhaps even in the immediate after-
math of its production, following the patriarch’s consecration in 57721.
While it is a spectacular survival, it is also one of the few extant texts
attributed to Damian. His subsequent patriarchate – the details of which
have been reconstructed in a number of modern studies22, and which
I will not repeat here – is notable for its high drama, in particular for
the famous conflict with the Antiochene patriarch, Peter of Callinicum.
Because of Peter’s Anti-Tritheist Dossier and the vast Contra Damianum,
which survive whole or in part in Syriac, we know of some extensive
doctrinal texts of Damian, as well as several smaller ones, which Peter
cites in fragments23. But these various texts, which must have been com-
posed in Greek (if not also in Coptic and Syriac), are all otherwise lost.
The History of the Patriarchs attributes to Damian a number of texts:
a letter ordering the expulsion of the Meletians from Scetis24; ‘the Logos
(‫’)الاغس‬, called ‘a discourse of wisdom’ (‫‘ ;)كلام حكمة‬mystagogic texts
(‫‘ ;’)مستوغجيات‬festal letters (‫ = ارطستكات‬ἑορταστικαί)’25; a homily sent
to Peter on the orthodox conception of the Trinity26; and various ‘letters,
homilies, and treatises’ against heretics27. None of these, however, seems
to survive, although some might correspond to those aforementioned
21
See van der Vliet, Le prêtre Marc, attributing to the scribe and priest Mark the
inscription of the Synodical Letter, following Crum, and also P.Pisentius 22, 29 (both
sent to Pesynthius of Koptos) and 10 recto (sent from Senuthes of Antinoe). Mark – who
appears in various other texts from the Theban Mountain, and seems to have been central
to its network of bishops – was thus a contemporary or near-contemporary of Damian. See
also Heurtel, Marc le prêtre; Ead., Écrits et écritures de Marc.
22
See esp. Maspero, Histoire des patriarches, p. 278-317; Ebied et al., Anti-Tritheist
Dossier, p. 34-43; Blaudeau, Le voyage; Booth, Towards the Coptic Church.
23
See CPG (Suppl.), 7240-7248, citing Ebied et al., Anti-Tritheist Dossier, p. 81-82,
84-86, 91-92 for Damian’s three letters to Peter; and the indices to Peter of Callinicum,
Contra Damianum, ed. Ebied, IV, p. 487-484. To these can be added the Enthronement
Sermon cited Peter of Callinicum, Contra Damianum 3.15.224-238 (Peter of Callinicum,
Contra Damianum, ed. Ebied, II, p. 397-399), where it states, correctly, that the same pas-
sage was later also included in Damian’s Synodical Letter (= Winlock – Crum, Monastery
of Epiphanius, vol. 2, p. 150; Michael the Great, Chronicle 10.14, ed. Chabot, IV, p. 358-
359). There is an extremely useful guide to the contents of Damian’s works as cited by
Peter in Di Berardino, Patrology, p. 397-400 (by Pauline Allen).
24
History of the Patriarchs (Primitive Recension), p. 90.
25
Ibid. Note that History of the Patriarchs (Vulgate Recension), II, p. 477, adds to
‘festal letters’ also ‘catechetical texts (‫ = قاتكسيسات‬καθηγήσεις)’.
26
History of the Patriarchs (Primitive Recension), p. 91.
27
History of the Patriarchs (Primitive Recension), p. 92. Cf. also John of Ephesus,
Ecclesiastical History 3.4.43, describing patriarchal encyclicals.
26 P. BOOTH
texts cited within Peter’s extant corpus (e.g. the ‘homily’ sent to Peter).
Besides these fragments, there also exist the aforementioned Coptic and
Syriac versions of the patriarch’s synodical; a letter of consolation sent
after the death of Jacob Baradeus, embedded in the Chronicle of Michael
the Great28; the immediate introductions, on Coptic ostraca, to two fes-
tal letters29; the fragments of another festal letter, dated to 59630; and a
sermon On the Birth of Our Saviour, extant in Coptic fragments in New
York, Turin, and Paris31.
The extant text of this sermon – which also concerns a contemporaneous
earthquake32 – focuses on the Annunciation, but is otherwise of interest
since it refers in the opening section to ‘Constantine the patrikios who
is called Lartēs’ ([ⲕ]ⲱⳓ[ⲧⲁⲛ]ⲧⲓⲛⲟⲥ ⲡⲡ[ⲁⲧ]ⲣⲓⲕⲓⲟⲥ ⲡⲉⲧⲉϣⲁⲩⲙⲟⲩⲧⲉ
ⲉⲣⲟϥ ϫⲉⲗⲁⲣⲧⲏⲥ), and to his mission to Alexandria, under Maurice,
‘to seize [ϫⲓ: receive?] all the archons of Egypt’33. The suggestion is
28
Michael the Great, Chronicle 10.16, ed. Chabot, IV, p. 366-369 = CPG (Suppl.)
7241.
29
P.Mon.Epiph. 53, 55. It is clear from the former that Damian’s festal letters circu-
lated later as a collection; see also O.Crum 18, 249, Ad. 59 = O.Lips.Copt. 10. Crum in
Winlock – Crum, Monastery of Epiphanius, vol. 2, p. 163 suggests that P.Mon.Epiph. 54,
which mentions various heretics, might also belong to a work of Damian – the scribe is
identical with P.Mon.Epiph. 53.
30
596: Camplani, Coptic Fragments from a Festal Letter. Note also that a fragment
from Damian’s festal letter of 588/9 is cited in Peter of Callinicum, Contra Damianum 3.19.
It is probable that P.Grenf. II 112, a festal letter dated to 577, belongs to John IV or Peter IV,
who died in the same summer; cf. Camplani, La Quaresima egiziana, p. 429-430.
31
Ed. Crum, Theological Texts, p. 21-33; with Depuydt, Catalogue, I, p. 687. Crum,
Theological Texts, p. 23 recognised that his text in New York overlapped with some of
the nine Coptic fragments in Rossi, I papiri copti, vol. 2.4, p. 56-62, which provides the
continuation of Damian’s sermon. Orlandi, Papiro di Torino republishes Rossi’s frag-
ments, which in fact belong to a single codex, but at ibid., p. 594 rearranges the order as
fr. VII, IV, I, II, III, VI, and ‘Parte Prima fr. I’ (Rossi, I papiri copti, vol. 2.4, p. 63-64),
to which Rossi IX should be added to the beginning (as in Orlandi, Turin Coptic Papyri,
p. 518 – Rossi V and VIII, according to Orlandi, belong to a different text). The overlap
with Crum’s text therefore occurs in Rossi fr. IX, VII, IV, and I (cf. Crum, Theological
Texts, p. 27-32). Another potential Coptic sermon of Damian, at present unedited, is con-
tained in IFAO Copte inv. 182.
32
Thus Crum, Theological Texts, p. 23 translates the second part of the title (ⲁⲩⲱ
ⲉⲧⲃⲉⲡϣⲁⲁⲛ Ⲙⲡⲙⲟⲩ ⲙⲚⲡⲕⲘⲧⲟ Ⲛⲧⲁϥ[...) as ‘and concerning the terror (?) of death
(ⲡϣⲁⲁⲛ Ⲙⲡⲙⲟⲩ) and the earthquake, that did …’, reading ϣⲁⲁⲛ as ϣⲗⲁϩ (n. 3).
Orlandi, Papiro di Torino, p. 595 retranslates Crum’s text, offering (without comment)
‘sul maremoto e sul terremote’, for which I suppose he reads ⲡϣⲁⲁⲛ Ⲙⲡⲙⲟⲩ as ⲡϣⲁ
ⲛⲡⲙⲟⲟⲩ (‘the rising of water’) vel sim. The earthquake appears again in Rossi’s fr. VI
(see previous note), from which it appears to have affected Phoenicia. Damian seems to
blame it on doctrinal division. Several earthquakes are known from this period; for com-
ment see Crum, Theological Texts, p. 21-23.
33
After introducing Constantine, the sermon states (Crum, Theological Texts, p. 23):
‘And the patrician, consul (ⲡϩⲩⲡⲁⲧⲟⲥ) and general (ⲡⲉⲥⲧⲣⲁⲧ[ⲏⲗⲁ]ⲧⲏⲥ) was
there with Amantius the … eunuch ([ⲥⲓ]ⲟⲩⲣ) and all the archons of Egypt and all the
therefore that this Constantine was present when the sermon was deliv-
ered, one presumes at Christmas. One potential fragment claims that the
sermon was delivered in ‘the catholic church’, which perhaps indicates
the Angelion at Alexandria34. The dangers of extrapolating from the extant
titles of Coptic sermons are notorious. But ‘Constantine Lartēs’ here is no
doubt the patrikios Constantine Lardys who served as praetorian prefect
of the east under Maurice (582-602)35; and we might be tempted to asso-
ciate the sermon’s alleged occasion with the mission of the ‘Constantine
the patrician (baṭriq)’ who John of Nikiu’s Chronicle claims to have been
appointed ‘governor of Alexandria’, and to have punished the protagonists
in the so-called ‘’Aykǝlāh revolt’, which occurred in the Delta during the
reign of Maurice36. The precision of the reference to Constantine inspires,
then, some confidence in the attribution – a polemic against tritheists
within the sermon’s final fragment seems to corroborate it. If our title is
authentic, then, we have both a precious text of Damian and an otherwise
unparalleled witness to Maurice’s courting of the nascent Severan church,
to the extent that the highest official in the region attended an important
feast37.
In comparison to the huge documentation generated around the con-
temporaneous doctrinal conflicts in Syriac, Damian’s extant corpus might
seem a rather meagre feast, and much no doubt has been lost. But though
the Egyptologist might well cast an envious glance at the large (and still
under-studied) literature now extant in Syriac, if we broaden our per-
spective beyond the patriarch himself we discover, during his tenure, an
unprecedented amount of contemporaneous evidence, connected to his
suffragans and generated across several media. The patriarchate of Damian
people … of the whole city.’ The three titles ‘patrician, consul, and general’ seem to belong
to Constantine.
34
See Lucchesi, L’homélie De nativitate, who suggests, following Crum, Theological
Texts, p. 21 n. 5, that Rossi’s fr. V might belong to the text (p. 231 with n. 8). This fragment
states that the sermon was performed in ‘the catholic church’, which might mean a so-called
‘parish church’, but might indicate the cathedral church i.e. the Angelion.
35
PLRE III Constantinus qui et Lardys 33 (missing the reference in Damian’s sermon).
A note of caution is perhaps sounded in the appearance of ‘Amantius the eunuch’ within
the title. Such a person is unknown under Maurice, but Crum notes the coincidence with
the famous eunuch Amantius executed under Justin I (PLRE II Amantius 4), to which we
might also add the Amantius who acted as an enforcer of Justinian (PLRE III Amantius 2),
although the latter was not a eunuch. Crum, Theological Texts, p. 22 n. 2 ‘suspects that the
name had grown legendary’ although it is possible that it was a name which eunuchs used.
36
See John of Nikiu, Chronicle 97, ed. Zotenberg, p. 174-179, with the reference to
Constantine at p. 178. On the revolt see below p. 56.
37
Note the similar formula which occurs in the title to Constantine of Assiut’s First
Encomium on Saint Claudius, also said to have been performed in the presence of eminent
imperial officials (below p. 34).
28 P. BOOTH
is therefore remarkable both for its impact on Syriac sources – a product

of Damian’s ambition, before 586, to dominate the emergent Severan-
Jacobite communion38 – and a simultaneous, or subsequent, period of cul-
tural production connected to the members of Egypt’s emergent Severan
episcopate.
3. John of Paralos
The person whom the History of the Patriarchs places first within the
episcopal circle of Damian is one John of Burlus, that is, Paralos on the
Mediterranean coast to the east of Alexandria. Little is known of John’s
relationship to the patriarch, but it is perhaps significant that at the begin-
ning of Damian’s dispute with Peter of Callinicum, the latter and his
entourage attend an initial, failed rendezvous at Paralos, suggesting, per-
haps, that its bishop was a trusted confidante39. We do not know, however,
when John was consecrated in his see, or indeed when he died40.
A short Life of John appears in the Lower Egyptian recension of the
synaxarium, under the 19th Kiyahk41. It is divided into distinct episodes
which perhaps lend the impression that it has been excerpted from a larger,
lost, Life of John of Paralos – the existence of such a text is indeed con-
firmed in the late seventh-century Life of John of Scetis42. The synaxar-
ion as it stands, however, contains but the slightest hints as to the period
in which John lived. On this account, John was nobleman who became
a monk at Scetis under ‘Daniel’, whom we can perhaps assume to be the
famed higoumen of the age of Justinian43. From here, the text continues,
38
See Blaudeau, Le voyage.
39
As suggested also in Müller, Damian, Papst, p. 137. For the attempted rendezvous
see Peter’s Letter to the Alexandrians and Letter to the Antonines preserved in Ebied et
al., Anti-Tritheist Dossier, p. 63-66; also the narrative in Michael the Great, Chronicle
10.22, and the references in Peter of Callinicum, Contra Damianum 2.7.22; 3.2.138,
30.14, 31.400, 32.105, 129.
40
Pace Müller, Damian, Papst, p. 137, who claims he was appointed under Peter IV.
41
On the two recensions of the synaxarium and the problems which beset the compet-
ing modern editions of the Copto-Arabic Synaxarium (in particular those of Basset and
Forget, which interweave the southern and northern recensions) see Coquin, Le synaxaire
des Coptes; Id., Editions of the Synaxarion. Useful also is Swanson, Copto-Arabic Syn-
axarion.
42
See Arabic Life of John of Scetis 22, ed. Zanetti, p. 345, which, after recounting the
great fear of John of Scetis when celebrating the eucharist, adds, ‘Truly it is written in the
Life (‫ )سيرة‬of our blessed father Amba John, bishop of Paralos, who saw this.’ A similar
anecdote is attributed to John of Paralos, without mentioning John of Scetis, at Copto-
Arabic Synaxarium, ed. Basset, II, p. 488; ed. Forget, I, p. 166.
43
On Daniel and his dates (d. c. 576) see Vivian, Witness to Holiness. For Daniel’s
anti-Chalcedonism see also Dahlman, Saint Daniel of Sketis, p. 56-58.
he was elevated to the see of Paralos, which was then rife with schism, and
brought back into communion five different sects. Some intriguing details
follow. It is said that during John’s episcopate two prophets appeared and
gathered large followings, before the bishop chased them from the region:
one, a monk of Upper Egypt, claimed inspiration from the archangel Michael;
while the other claimed to be the mouthpiece for Habacuc, that is, the bibli-
cal prophet who had predicted the rise of the Chaldeans as a punishment for
sin – the temptation, then, is to place this latter person within the context
of rising Sasanian aggression in the period 603-618. ‘And he proved false
moreover many false books which were in the church,’ this part of the text
concludes44. The remainder of the synaxarium’s entry on John turns to three
short vignettes focused on the eucharist, one of them concerning a priest
who practised magic.
Given, therefore, the synaxarium’s consistent emphasis on John’s intol-
erance of various paraecclesial texts and activities, it is quite striking that
there survives under John’s name the opening of a sermon Against Hereti-
cal Books, edited from two Coptic manuscripts by Arnold van Lantschoot45.
In the opening section John names five Egyptian apocrypha which he will
denounce. His polemic against four of these – the Kerygma of John, Jubi-
lation of the Apostles, Education of Adam, and Counsel of the Saviour –
falls in the lost section and the texts themselves do not seem to survive
elsewhere. But a fifth, the Investiture of [the Archangel] Michael, is extant,
and John’s opening polemic against it corresponds to its contents46. It is
tempting, moreover, to connect it somehow to that aforementioned ‘monk
of Upper Egypt’ who claimed to have received instruction from Michael
himself, and with whom the bishop John clashed.
It was said above that various texts produced within Damian’s episco-
pal circle remain unpublished, and John’s corpus is not exempt47. A
Life of Damiana, a Diocletianic nun and martyr, is attributed to a ‘John
of Paralos’ in a large number of Arabic manuscripts, but seems to belong
to a later period48. (Orlandi, note, consistently confuses this for a Life of
44
Copto-Arabic Synaxarium, ed. Basset, II, p. 486-487; ed. Forget, I, p. 346.
45
van Lantschoot, Fragments coptes (from BnF copte 131 f. 15v and ÖNB K 9831r-
9838v).
46
John attacks the claim that Michael became archangel after the devil’s Fall, and the
celebration of the event on a given date (the 12th Hātūr). For the extant Sahidic text see
Müller, Die Bücher der Einsetzung.
47
See van Lantschoot, Fragments coptes, p. 299-301; Orlandi, Elementi, p. 104-105.
48
For some of the manuscripts see e.g. Graf, Geschichte, I, p. 468. I have not been
able to consult the old edition of ‘Awad, Mimar al-šahīda Dimyāna (based on three manu
scripts). The Life is studied in Armanios, Coptic Christianity, p. 65-90, who argues on
internal grounds (at p. 71-72) that the ‘John of Paralos’ concerned is a Ottoman-era figure,
30 P. BOOTH
Damian49). But there also survives in Arabic an unpublished sermon on

the last judgement (which also contains a reference to a lost sermon on
Psalm 103:31 and 114:7)50 and, in the Arabic and Ethiopic Confessio
patrum, a series of thirteen anathemata attributed to our John. These are
said to be both ‘in the short sermon which he called On the Removal of
Books’ (as above) and ‘in the sermon which he called The Order of the
Church’51. The anathemas address a wide range of errors – including
tritheism, Arianism, Sabellianism, Gnosticism, and Apollinarianism – but
not, we should note, the assertion of two natures in Christ52.
4. Constantine of Assiut
The career and corpus of Constantine, bishop of Assiut (= Lykopolis/

Asyūṭ)53, are now known, above all, through the careful reconstructions
of Gérard Garitte and René-Georges Coquin54. From an entry devoted to
perhaps identical with the ‘John of Paralos’ who is an alleged compiler, in the Ethiopian
tradition, of the synaxarium; see e.g. Burmester, On the Date and Authorship, p. 250-
251; Coquin, La date possible.
49
See e.g. Orlandi, Elementi, p. 105, referring to an Ethiopic Vita Damiani episcopi
(which confused Müller, Damian, Papst, p. 139 n. 75); also Orlandi, Letteratura copta,
p. 115 n. 158, where he refers to an Arabic Vita di Damiano. Cf. Lucchesi, L’homélie De
nativitate, p. 231-232.
50
Vat. Ar. 90, with van Lantschoot, Fragments coptes, p. 299; cf. Graf, Geschichte,
I, p. 468.
51
See Graf, Zwei dogmatische Florilegien, p. 401-402 (with p. 402 n. 1 for the two
titles, one of which is from an index). There is also an unidentified Ethiopic citation from
a ‘John of Burlus’ within a florilegium, pointed to in Dillmann, Catalogus, p. 21 no. 15
(cf. also van Lantschoot, Fragments coptes, p. 300).
52
I‘tirāf al-Ābā’, ed. Dayr al-Muḥarraq. I have not seen this edition, but have been
able to consult an Ethiopic version of the anathemas in the British Library (BL Or. 784
f. 193v-195r); cf. Dillmann, Catalogus, p. 19 no. 14; Wright, Catalogue of the Ethiopic
Manuscripts, p. 233-235, nos. 344-346). Since their contents have not, to my knowledge,
been described in Western scholarship, I give them in brief here: 1) Against those who
assert three wills in the godhead; 2) Against those who think the Son or Spirit inferior to
the Father; 3) Against those who claim the Son came after the Father, and the Spirit after
the Son; 4) Against those who deny the consubstantiality of the Trinity; 5) Against those
who collapse the Trinity into one power and person; 6) Against those who do not confess
that the only-begotten Son became man for our salvation; 7) Against those who claim that
the Virgin is a celestial power; 8) Against those who think the flesh of the Son is from
heaven; 9) Against those who deny Christ’s rational soul and resurrection in the flesh;
10) Against those who deny the orthodox clergy and sacraments; 11) Against those who
claim that the Son suffered against his will; 12) Against those who claim that the flesh of
Christ had the appearance of corruption in the tomb; 13) Against those who deny the
orthodox faith and the presence of God in the orthodox Church.
53
See Timm, Das christlich-koptische Ägypten, p. 235-251 (p. 239-240 on Constantine,
and speculating that he might have been bishop when John Moschus visited; see Pratum
Spirituale, p. 161).
54
Garitte, Constantin; Coquin, Saint Constantin.
him in Upper-Egyptian recension of the synaxarium we ascertain that

Constantine was an ascetic who had entered upon his monastic career along-
side two other future bishops: Rufus bishop of Šuṭb (= Shotep/Hypsele)55
and Joseph bishop of Isfaḥt (= Sbeht/Apollinopolis Minor)56. Under Damian,
however, he was elevated to the see of Assiut, and at some point became
his patriarchal ‘vicar for Upper Egypt’ (‫)نائب على الوجه القبلى‬57. Elsewhere
I have discussed in some detail the creation of the vicarate under Damian,
and Constantine’s assumption of the office, which is henceforth witnessed
in a number of sources58. But suffice to note here that Constantine retired
from the office while still alive – perhaps because of a change of patri-
arch? – and that the vicarate then passed to another episcopal colleague,
Senuthes of Antinoe59. Senuthes, indeed, appears in a small dossier of texts60,
and from the various texts associated with him and with Constantine we
also learn the names of several more of their episcopal colleagues: Pisrael
of Qus61 (who appears in other evidence alongside one Antonius of Ape)62;
Pesynthius of Hermonthis; and Abraham of Diospolis Minor63.
What else can we ascertain of Constantine’s career? The synaxarium
claims that he was a prolific homilist and hagiographer, and this claim
is corroborated in the manuscript tradition. In Coptic several texts are
55
See Timm, Das christlich-koptische Ägypten, p. 2416-2424.
56
Ibid., p. 1433-1438. Joseph seems to be otherwise unknown (ibid., p. 1434). Note
that Benaissa, Two Bishops Named Senuthes, p. 179-180 gathers a small archive of another
bishop of Apollinopolis Minor, Senuthes, also active c. 600 (dated on palaeographical
grounds). His successor was called Macarius (SB XVI 12869), but the sequencing of the
three bishops is not clear (cf. Benaissa, Two Bishops Named Senuthes, p. 184).
57
The entry on Constantine was published incomplete from BnF ar. 4895 f. 51r-v in
Garitte, Constantin, p. 300-301; but then published in full from a manuscript from Luxor
in Coquin, Saint Constantin, p. 154-155 (on the ms. see Id., Le synaxaire des Coptes. For
more detail see Booth, Towards the Coptic Church).
58
Booth, Towards the Coptic Church. For Constantine as vicar cf. P.Pisentius 10 recto.
59
See Benaissa, Two Bishops Named Senuthes; developed in Booth, Towards the
Coptic Church. For Senuthes as vicar see Copto-Arabic Synaxarium, ed. Basset, II, p. 490;
ed. Forget, I, p. 345 (both from the fragmentary ms. of the Upper-Egyptian recension in
BnF ar. 4869), with the missing preceding text published in Winlock – Crum, Monastery
of Epiphanius, vol. 1, p. 136 n. 2. It is possible that Senuthes is the ‘vicar’ (ϯⲁⲧⲟⲭⲟⲥ)
of the patriarch Andronicus who appears in the Second Encomium on Saint Claudius; see
below p. 34.
60
Benaissa, Two Bishops Named Senuthes.
61
P.Pisentius 10 recto. Cf. ibid. 7, 8; O.CrumST 255 and P.Mon.Epiph 150, 426.
62
P.Pisentius 11.
63
These two appear alongside Constantine, Senuthes, and Pesynthius of Koptos in the
episode from the synaxarium at n. 59 above. Although all three were active under Damian,
the episode itself seems to post-date him, and so too perhaps, therefore, do the two bishops;
cf. Booth, Towards the Coptic Church; and see now also Dekker, Bishop Abraham,
p. 24-25, who points to two bishops of Apollinopolis Magna named in the Theban docu-
ments, and active c. 615-c. 623: John and Horame.
32 P. BOOTH
attributed to Constantine64. The most substantial are four encomia from

the library of the Monastery of St Michael in the Fayyum, discovered
in 1910 and now held in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York: two
On Athanasius, published by Tito Orlandi65; and two On St Claudius of
Antioch, published by Gérard Godron66 (these also survive in Arabic67,
and the first in Ethiopic)68. Besides these there exists a fragment of an
Encomium on St George, translated by Gérard Garitte69, from the full ver-
sion of which certain Arabic miracles of George attributed to Constantine
perhaps derive70; and, within the Coptic Holy Week Lectionary, a short
extract from a Homily on Lent and Easter, published by Oswald Hugh
Edward Burmester71. A full Arabic version of the latter, which is attrib-
uted to Constantine and seems to derive from the Coptic, was recently
published by Bigoul al-Suriani, from four manuscripts at Deir al-Surian
in the Wadi al-Natrun72.
64
See also Garitte, Constantin, p. 287-297; Coquin, Saint Constantin, p. 163-164.
In addition to the Coptic works discussed in the main text above, there also exist the
unedited fragments of a sermon On Isaiah 14.18 (= CPC 0463) at IFAO Copte inv. 173;
signalled in Coquin, Le Fonds copte, p. 15. Note also that the catalogue of the (lost) Coptic
library of the Monastery of Elijah in the Thebaid mentions an ‘encomium of Apa Constantine
on Apa Senuthes’; see Coquin, Le catalogue du couvent de Saint Élie, p. 211. The tentative
suggestion of Benaissa, Two Bishops Named Senuthes, p. 183 that this lost encomium
might have concerned Senuthes of Antinoe is improbable. The Monastery of al-Hanāda in
which the synaxarium places Constantine (above n. 57) is known from elsewhere to have
been dedicated to the fifth-century archimandrite Shenoute of Atripe (see Coquin, Saint
Constantin, p. 168), who is therefore the more obvious subject of the sermon, if the ‘Apa
Constantine’ is indeed ours.
65
Constantini encomia in Athanasium, ed. Orlandi (from M579 f. 113r-122v; 123r-130r).
66
Godron, Saint Claude, p. 508-669 (from M587 f. 42r-72v; 73r-110v). For analysis
see also Orlandi, Claudio Martire and Sheridan, The Encomium in Coptic Sermons,
p. 459-461.
67
For a French translation of the Arabic of the first encomium (from the unedited
BnF ar. 4793 f. 18v-49v) see Amélineau, Contes et romans, p. 1-54. On this see now
Vanthieghem, La tradition manuscrite arabe, who adds three further witnesses. The second
encomium is contained in BnF ar. 4776 f. 101r-159r; cf. Godron, Saint Claude, p. 417,
but note that the ms. Laur. Or. 392 (once 204) f. 69r-139v in fact contains the first enco-
mium, although interspersed with parts of the second (Vanthieghem, La tradition manu-
scrite arabe, p. 197-198). I am grateful to Naïm Vanthieghem for confirming this. Another
ms. of the second encomium is signalled in Zanetti, Manuscrits de Dair Abû Maqâr,
p. 73, no. 485 = Hag. 72. Garitte, Constantin, p. 290-291 gives the Arabic titles of both.
68
In BnF Abbadie 179 and BM Or. 686. The first was published in Pereira, Acta
Martyrum, p. 195-216. Cf. Godron, Saint Claude, p. 418.
69
Garitte, Le panégyrique de S. Georges.
70
Coptic Museum, Hist. 472 f. 41r-102v; described in Graf, Catalogue des manuscrits
au Caire, p. 272 no. 715 2 (cf. Macomber, Final Inventory, vol. 3, no. B 11-9-c).
71
Burmester, The Homilies or Exhortations (from Vat. Copt. 98 f. 63v-64r and Cath-
olic Institute Paris Copt. 6 f. 41v-43r).
72
Al-Suriani, An Arabic Homily on Lent. A further witness seems to exist in Coptic
Museum Lit. 17 f. 78r-81r; see Macomber, Final Inventory vol. 1, no. A10-12-2ii.
Indeed, several of Constantine’s works are not extant except in Arabic73.

There exists in several manuscripts an unpublished Encomium on John of
Heraclea, designed for the saint’s feast on the 4th Paōne74, of which Garitte
has published, from a single manuscript, the extended Arabic title75. Other
texts attributed to Constantine – all also unpublished – survive in single
manuscripts: a Second Encomium on John of Heraclea, intended for the
4th Kiyahk, the date of his invention76; an Encomium on St Isidore of Anti-
och (and his family) for the 19th Pashons77; and a homily with the tantalis-
ing title, On the Fallen Soul and Its Exit from the World78. The full publi-
cation of all these works remains, of course, a considerable desideratum79.
What more do these works tell us of Constantine’s life? Garitte has
published a precious sentence from the first Encomium on John of Hera
clea in which Constantine reveals that it was ‘Damian, head of the bishops
of Alexandria (‫ ’)رئيس اساقفة الاسكندرية‬who had consecrated him bishop of
Assiut, thus confirming the witness of the Upper-Egyptian synaxarium80.
If, then, Constantine began as bishop in the patriarchate of Damian, and
was also elected vicar under him, when did he die?
73
See also Garitte, Constantin, p. 294-296; Coquin, Saint Constantin, p. 164-165.
74
For the manuscripts (but not including the various texts on John of Heraclea which
do not bear an attribution in the catalogues) see Garitte, Constantin, p. 294-295; Coquin,
Saint Constantin, p. 164 n. 5 (and note that the ms. in the Coptic Museum should in fact be
Lit. 83 f. 25r-54r; see Macomber, Final Inventory, vol. 1, no. A17-5-2). Zanetti, Manu-
scrits de Dair Abû Maqâr, p. 54 no. 379 = Hag. 13, cites a further Arabic ms., and also points
to an edition of the text (or this manuscript?) in Salīm – Miniāwī, Min diyārāt al-ābā’, 4,
p. 8-23 (non vidi).
75
Garitte, Constantin, p. 295-296, from BM Or. 5648 f. 38r-v. This states that the
homily was delivered at the saint’s tomb in Ḥamyūr ‘in the district of Asyūṭ.’
76
Coptic Museum, Hist. 475 f. 33v-35v (see Macomber, Final Inventory, vol. 3,
no. B11-5-f). Cf. Coquin, Saint Constantin, p. 164 n. 6 ; Garitte, Constantin, p. 295 n. 4.
77
Monastery of St Anthony, Hist. 123 f. 3v-48r. Further witnesses to this text, not noted
in the articles of Garitte or Coquin, have since been pointed to in Cairo, Church of the Virgin,
Theol. 8, f. 132v-225v; see Khater – Burmester, Catalogue, 2, p. 53, no. 113; Monastery
of St Menas Theol. 6, f. 1r-79r; Theol. 28 (139 folios); see Khater – Burmester, Catalogue,
1, p. 47, no. 50; 60, no. 46, describing the text respectively as ‘Homily on St. Isidorus, his
father Leo, his mother Sophia and his sister Euphemia by Constantine, bishop of Asyūṭ’ and
‘Homily on the martyr St. Isidorus of Antioch, his mother Sophia and his sister Euphemia
by Constantine, bishop of Asyūṭ.’
78
Coptic Patriarchate, Theol. 245, f. 54r-68r (cf. Graf, Catalogue des manuscrits au
Caire, p. 205, no. 544 5).
79
To this corpus we might perhaps add P.Mon.Epiph. 131, which Garitte, Constantin,
p. 304 suggests might be an autograph of Constantine – in it one Constantine ‘the most humble
[bishop?]’ transmits to the archimandrite Epiphanius a letter of an unnamed patriarch.
80
Garitte, Constantin, p. 297 (from BM Or. 5648 f. 39v). Thanks to Edward Zychowicz-
Coghill in Oxford, I have been able to consult a text and translation of this encomium, in
which Constantine describes how, after his appointment by Damian and arrival in Assiut,
he went to the shrine of the Holy Family on ‘the mountain of al-Qūṣīya [Koussai]’, and
then travelled to the shrine of John at Hamyūr, near Assiut.
34 P. BOOTH
Under the 20th Kiyahk, the Upper-Egyptian synaxarium contains a

unique passage which refers to Constantine’s transfer of the relics of the
Diocletianic bishop Elias of al-Qūṣīya (Koussai) to Assiut, at time when
‘the land was devastated’ and Koussai itself had to be rebuilt – this sug-
gests the Persian invasion (618-620)81. The survival of Constantine until
this late date is perhaps also suggested through the details which intro-
duce the Second Encomium on St Claudius (in which, we should note,
the shrine of Elias at Koussai also features).82 The Coptic of the first
encomium informs us that it was performed in the saint’s shrine – at
Pohe in the region of Assiut83 – in the presence of ‘all the people of the
three cities’84, a crowd of philoponoi, and ‘the eparch, the general, and
a magistrianus’ of the emperor (ⲡⲉⲡⲁⲣⲭⲟⲥ ⲁⲩⲱ ⲡⲉⲥⲧⲣⲁⲧⲏⲗⲁⲧⲏⲥ
ⲙⲛⲟⲩⲙⲁⲅⲓⲥⲧⲣⲓⲁⲛⲟⲥ); while the Coptic of the second encomium also
locates it in the saint’s shrine with ‘all the people’, including ‘a crowd
from the city of Shmoun (= Hermopolis)’85. The latter, however, adds
another attendee, that is, ‘the representative of the archbishop (ϯⲁⲧⲟⲭⲟⲥ
ⲙⲡⲁⲣⲭⲓⲉⲡⲓⲥⲕⲟⲡⲟⲥ), who had come south in Egypt (ⲉⲁϥⲉⲓ ⲉⲣⲏⲥ
ϩⲚⲕⲏⲙⲉ) and reached the saint’s feast,’ thence reporting back to ‘the
archbishop Apa Andronicus’ (ⲁⲣⲭⲓⲉⲡⲓⲥⲕⲟⲡⲟⲥ ⲁⲡⲁ ⲁⲛⲑⲣⲟⲛⲓⲕⲟⲥ),
the Severan patriarch c. 618-c. 62586. We note therefore that according
to the second encomium on St Claudius, Constantine was still serving as
bishop c. 620.
The title to the second encomium therefore presents us with some rather
precise prosopographical detail. But some doubts nevertheless surround
the attribution87. First of all, the two ‘Constantinian’ encomia are preserved
81
Copto-Arabic Synaxarium, ed. Basset, II, p. 493-494; ed. Forget, I, p. 346. For
al-Qūṣīya/Koussai see Timm, Das christlich-koptische Ägypten, p. 2180-2191.
82
Constantine of Assiut, Second Encomium on St Claudius (ed. Godron, Saint Claude,
p. 644). On this encomium see now Wipszycka, Saint Claude à Pohe.
83
Timm, Das christlich-koptische Ägypten, p. 422-424.
84
These are (pace Garitte, Constantin, p. 292), according to the composite Arabic
incipit contained in Laur. Or. 392, ‘Anṣinā … al-Ašmūnayn and … [A]syūṭ’ i.e. Antinoe,
Hermopolis, and Assiut; see Vanthieghem, La tradition manuscrite arabe, p. 197 n. 22.
It is interesting to note, therefore, that all three cities had known Severan incumbents in
this period (i.e. Senuthes, John, and Constantine).
85
p. 592). Note that the Arabic of the second encomium (given at Garitte, Constantin,
p. 291-292 from Paris BnF ar. 4776, f. 101r-v) presents an audience which is far closer to
that of the first in Coptic, i.e. ‘the people of the three cities; and great crowds were present,
and ‫ )?( المكحفين‬and present alongside them were the head of the regions (‫)كاشف الاقاليم‬
and his lieutenant (‫ )وزير‬and a great leader (‫ )نقيب‬whom the emperor had sent out …’
(Garitte, Constantin, p. 292).
86
See Jülicher, Die Liste, p. 11-15.
87
See Drescher, Apa Claudius; also Garitte, Constantin, p. 298-300.
in a dossier of four texts dedicated to St Claudius, in which the other two

seem to be spurious88; second, all four of those encomia are written in a
similar style, which is moreover quite distinct from, for example, the enco-
mia for Athanasius; and third, the first encomium on Claudius, at least,
includes an autobiographical passage in which the author recalls wit-
nessing the arrival at the saint’s feast of an imperial agent of the emperor
Anastasius (491-518), charged with the extraction of monies from the
local population89. There is little chance that our Constantine, active as
bishop c. 600, could have been alive in the reign of Anastasius, and it
seems improbable that the same reference can be explained as an acciden-
tal substitution of the proper emperor’s name90; or even as a careless slip
of Constantine himself91. But it is not impossible that the second enco-
mium is genuine while the first is not; and that the compiler of the dossier
has rewritten all of his texts in order to standardise the Coptic – there are,
in fact, certain signs that the texts have been redacted92. Indeed, as we shall
now see, the attribution of the second encomium seems to be confirmed in
a reference within it to another of Constantine’s friends and colleagues:
Rufus of Shotep.
5. Rufus of Shotep
As we have observed above, the Upper-Egyptian synaxarium states

that Constantine of Assiut first became a monk along with two other
future bishops: Joseph bishop of Apollinopolis Minor and Rufus bishop
of Shotep. It is therefore remarkable that at the end of the second enco-
mium to St Claudius, ‘Constantine’ relates how he had encountered a pre-
existing narrative on the saint while in Cappadocia, having visited Jeru-
salem in the company of ‘my brother Rufus (ϩⲣⲟⲩⲫⲟⲥ), both of us
being monks (ⲁⲡⲟⲧⲁⲕⲧⲓⲕⲟⲥ)’93. One manuscript of the Arabic transla-
tion is even more specific as to Constantine’s companion: ‘brother Rufus,
88
These are attributed to Anastasius, a companion of St Claudius, and to Severus of
Antioch; see Godron, Saint Claude, p. 424-506.
89
Constantine of Assiut, First Encomium on St Claudius (ed. Godron, Saint Claude,
p. 582).
90
Drescher, Apa Claudius, p. 64 n. 1; Coquin, Saint Constantin, p. 169 n. 4.
91
Constantini encomia in Athanasium, tr. Orlandi, p. vi.
92
See e.g. the nonsensical scene contained within the first of the posthumous miracles
attached to the Second Encomium on St Claudius (ed. Godron, Saint Claude, p. 618-620),
where Claudius requests that a ship’s captain sail to Alexandria and acquire green and blue
glasses – this is superfluous in narrative terms.
93
p. 614).
36 P. BOOTH
bishop of Shotep’94. It is possible, of course, that the attribution is inau-

thentic, and that the Arabic translator has made a simple association. But
if it is correct – in which case, the circumstances of the pair’s reported
presence in Cappadocia are fascinating but far from clear – the reference
is one of a precious handful of external references to Rufus, reconstructed
in a pioneering article of Gérard Garitte95. Besides the two aforementioned
texts, he is also commemorated as a prominent bishop of Shotep in a Life
of Michael I contained within the History of the Patriarchs96; and the
burial of a ‘Rufus, bishop’ at the Monastery of Abū al-Sirrī, near Assiut,
is mentioned in Ps.-Abū Ṣāliḥ’s thirteenth-century catalogue of Egyptian
monasteries and churches97. It seems, therefore, that all these texts refer to
a single Rufus, an associate of Constantine who, in or around the patriar-
chate of Damian, became bishop of Shotep, a small town to the immediate
southeast of Assiut.
Rufus of Shotep is also the alleged author of a significant number of
extant texts. In Arabic, Bigoul al-Suriani has now published an edition,
based on three Arabic manuscripts at the Deir al-Surian, of an extract from
a Lenten homily, focused on the need for repentance98, and it seems there
is another, hitherto unremarked, Arabic text or texts – described in the
catalogue as a ‘Homily on the All-Holy Virgin together with a Vita of
St. Besa by Harūs, bishop of Šuṭb’ – at Deir Mari Mina99. The most part
of Rufus’ reported corpus is extant, however, in Coptic. There survives
in four manuscripts from the White Monastery an incomplete series of
Coptic sermons attributed to Rufus which comprise parts of a Commen-
tary on Matthew and a Commentary on Luke, and which once belonged to
a liturgical cycle which gradually guided congregations through the Gos-
pel narratives. As Mark Sheridan has shown in his examination and edition
of the texts, to which Enzo Lucchesi has since added further witnesses100,
94
Cited in Garitte, Constantin, p. 302 n. 2; Id., Rufus, évêque de Šotep, p. 12 with
n. 4, pointing to P. Peeters in Analecta Bollandiana, 32 (1913), p. 467 (who cites from
Laur. Or. 204 f. 97, 107-107v). I am grateful to Naïm Vanthieghem for confirming this
reading, which does not occur however in the ms. Macarius Hag. 72; cf. above n. 67.
95
Garitte, Rufus, évêque de Šotep.
96
See History of the Patriarchs (Vulgate Recension), III, p. 204, giving the name as
‫ ;هزوقس‬while History the Patriarchs (Primitive Recension), p. 203, gives ‫هروفس‬, a sim-
ple transcription of the Coptic ϩⲣⲟⲩⲫⲟⲥ (cf. GARITTE, Rufus, évêque de Šotep, p. 12-13;
MacCoull, A Note on Rufus of Hypselis).
97
Ps.-Abū Ṣāliḥ, Churches and Monasteries of Egypt, p. 111 (f. 88a): ‫هروفس‬.
98
Al-Suriani, A Copto-Arabic Text.
99
Monastery of St Menas Hag. 12 f. 43v-50v; see KHATER – BURMESTER, Catalogue, 1,
p. 66, no. 139. I take ‘Harūs’ (‫ )هروس‬to be a simple corruption of ‫ هروفس‬i.e. Rufus (cf.
above n. 148).
100
Lucchesi, Feuillets édités non identifiés; Id. Deux commentaires coptes, p. 19-
21.
these commentaries are replete with the structures, approach, and language
of traditional Alexandrian exegesis, in particular that of Origen101. Frequent
recourse is made to allegorical interpretation and, while overt Christological
polemic is absent, the author adheres to the ‘single-subject’ approach asso-
ciated with Athanasius and his successors (although he is not free from
some striking inconsistencies in that regard)102. Besides this, localising ref-
erences are frustratingly few.
Is Rufus the original author? In his edition Sheridan assumed so, and
further argued that the texts – though indebted to the previous Alexandrian
tradition, and demonstrating a pervasive knowledge of the Greek text
of the Bible – were original productions in Coptic103. However both
Philippe Luisier104 and Enzo Lucchesi105 soon questioned this, suggesting
that Rufus’ name had become attached to an earlier, late fourth-century
Greek text in translation. For Lucchesi, at least, this is in part based upon
his well-known contention that all Coptic literature, in the absence of a
compelling counter-proof, presupposes a Greek original; but both scholars
also suppose that ‘un énigmatique évêque provincial égyptien de la fin
du vie siècle’, as Lucchesi calls Rufus, could not have ‘reconnected’ with
the Alexandrian exegetical tradition after such a long hiatus, and therein
broken with ‘l’antiorigénisme officiel ambiant’ of that period106. We shall
return to the question of the text’s original language below, but let it be
said here that a surprising feature of the discussion is the absence of detailed,
and thus compelling, proofs in one direction or the other107. Moreover, if
101
Sheridan, Rufus of Shotep. See also Id. “Steersman of the Mind”; The Influence
of Origen on Coptic Exegesis; Classical Education and Coptic Monks.
102
Thus the author applies the communicatio idiomatum to speak, for example, of God’s
birth (e.g. Commentary on Matthew 4) but then sometimes combines this with a partitive
exegesis which divides Christ’s deeds in terms which could be read as Nestorian; see e.g.,
with reference to Christ’s temptation, Commentary on Matthew 30, which states ‘but it is
with reference to the man whom he bears that all these things are said’ (ⲁⲗⲗⲁ ⲡⲣⲱⲙⲉ
ⲉⲧⲉϥⲫⲟⲣⲉⲓ Ⲙⲙⲟϥ ⲡⲉⲧⲟⲩϫⲱ ⲛⲛⲁⲓ ⲧⲏⲣⲟⲩ ⲉⲧⲃⲏⲏⲧϥ); cf. Commentary on Mat-
thew 31, which states with reference to Christ’s hunger, ‘It was not that the Saviour
hungered, but he informed us concerning the man whom he assumed (ⲉⲧⲃⲉⲡⲣⲱⲙⲉ ⲉⲧⲧⲟ
ϩⲓⲱⲱϥ) …’ (For these passages cf. Sheridan, Rufus of Shotep, p. 55, who does not see a
contradiction.) This tension between ‘unitive’ and ‘dualist’ Christologies is not uncommon
in Alexandrian theologians, but Rufus’ Christological position and language no doubt merit
further investigation.
103
Sheridan, Rufus of Shotep, p. 32, citing a single example from Commentary on
Matthew 59.
104
Luisier, Review of Sheridan, Rufus of Shotep. He demonstrates the weakness of
Sheridan’s ‘decisive’ argument for a Coptic original, which is based upon a single, prob-
lematic, example.
105
Lucchesi, La langue originale.
106
Lucchesi, Feuillets édités non identifiés, p. 269; cf. also Luisier, Review of Sheridan,
Rufus of Shotep, p. 473.
107
Lucchesi, La langue originale points to a fragment of Ezechiel (I 21-22, and 25-
26) which must be translated from the original Greek. This does not demonstrate, however,
38 P. BOOTH
Sheridan sins in presupposing a Coptic text, then it is as dubious to insin-

uate an absence of ‘provincial’ learning in Rufus’ lifetime (an argument
which presumes that the sermons are spurious). The perceived ‘hiatus’
in the exegetical tradition might well be a function of the extant evidence
and, even so, the wider textual production within Damian’s circle sug-
gests a deliberate effort to produce a new literature, that is, to ‘reconnect’
with previous tradition. At the same time, moreover, the contemporaneous
reception of Origen was far more complex than absolute opposition, and
the adoption of allegorical exegesis does not somehow translate into an
acceptance of Origen’s disputed protological, Christological, and eschato-
logical views108. Although the language, date, and attribution of the ser-
mons must, then, remain for now open questions, in the absence of detailed
counter-arguments I am inclined to believe that the name of this otherwise
‘énigmatique évêque provincial’ has become attached to the sermons for
the simple reason that he wrote them109.
6. John of Hermopolis
Alongside John of Paralos and Constantine of Assiut, the History of the

Patriarchs also identifies one ‘John the Recluse’ amongst the most promi
nent of Damian’s bishops. It has been suggested that this person is the
‘recluse’ (ⲉⲅⲕⲗⲏⲥⲧⲟⲥ) and priest who wrote an extant Encomium on
St Mark before his elevation as bishop, as the title of the text informs us110;
and, in turn, that he is the ‘Apa John bishop of Šmun [= Hermopolis]’ who
wrote an extant Encomium on St Anthony ‘while still a priest and recluse’
that the original language of the sermons was Greek, since it is not in dispute that Rufus
(or ‘Rufus’) used or had knowledge of both the Sahidic Bible and the Greek (Sheridan,
Rufus of Shotep, p. 32). The argument in favour of a Greek original presented in Lucchesi,
Feuillets édités non identifiés also seems a little superficial. There he points to the pres-
ence of Greek words in the sermons’ Coptic ‘qui sont de nature à dissiper tous doutes
sur la langue originale de l’auteur’ (p. 268) and to ‘un passage que seule une rétroversion
grecque permet de comprendre’ (p. 268 n. 28; cf. p. 273 n. 2). Neither point is clear to
me.
108
For this differentiated reading of Origen and his heirs in the same period elsewhere
see e.g. Sherwood, The Earlier Ambigua; Hombergen, Barsanuphius and John.
109
Cf. the response to Luisier of Sheridan, The Influence of Origen on Coptic Exegesis,
p. 1032-1033. I am not convinced, however, that ‘Rufus uses expressions that reflect the
theological atmosphere of the post-Chalcedonian period’ (pointing to his Sheridan, Rufus
of Shotep, p. 54-57). Nothing cited there demands this, and one is in fact struck by the
absence of something more decisive.
110
Ed. Orlandi, Studi Copti, p. 12. A lacuna at the beginning of the title ends
ⲉⲅ]ⲕⲗⲏⲥⲧⲟⲥ, from which Orlandi constructs ‘episcopus apa Iohannes] reclusus’ (13,
following Crum, Catalogue of the Coptic Manuscripts, p. 73b n. 1; and Garitte, Panégy-
rique de saint Antoine, p. 102). Cf. P.Lond.Copt. II 116.
(ⲁⲓⲧⲉⲓ ⲉϥⲟ ⲙⲡⲣⲉⲥⲃⲩⲧⲉⲣⲟⲥ ⲁⲩⲱ ⲛⲉⲅⲕⲗⲏⲥⲧⲟⲥ)111. In the latter

the author speaks of Damian as ‘the greatest among pastors, the arch-
priest and arch-shepherd among shepherds,’ and of an otherwise unknown
bishop Nicholas, who is perhaps his predecessor in the see of Hermopo-
lis, who had been a monk before becoming bishop, and who had held his
see for a decade at the time of writing112. From these extant texts, there-
fore, we can surmise that John was a hermit and priest who later became
bishop of Hermopolis and – presuming that Nicholas is, at the earliest, a
bishop of Peter IV – that the terminus post quem for his episcopate is 585,
during the patriarchate of Damian. Nothing else is known of him, although
it is possible that he is the bishop John of Hermopolis who appears in
P.Rain.Cent. 79113.
7. Pesynthius of Koptos
Of Damian’s various known suffragans, perhaps the most famous

is Pesynthius of Koptos. The synaxarium celebrates Pesynthius on the
13th Abīb114, and the bishop’s cult still survives in modern Egypt115. In part
Pesynthius’ posthumous fame is due to the survival of an extensive Enco-
mium on Pesynthius of Koptos, extant in Sahidic, Bohairic, and Arabic
recensions. The recent research of Renate Dekker organises these into four
groups: first, a short Sahidic version from Western Thebes, witnessed in
a manuscript dated to 1005 C.E. (S)116, but with other partial witnesses
in a late seventh-century papyrus (L)117 and a codex (Q) which Dekker
dates to the second half of the seventh century118; second, a longer Sahidic
111
Ed. Garitte, Panégyrique de saint Antoine (at p. 114 for the title), from Pierpont
Morgan M 579 f. 72r-87r. Two fragments are also contained in BM Or. 3851, described in
Crum, Catalogue of the Coptic Manuscripts, p. 73 no. 184. One of these gives the author
as ‘Ap]a John the Re[cl]use, Bishop of Hermopolis’. The link between this person and
the ‘John the Recluse’ of the History of the Patriarchs is first made in Crum, Review of
Maspero, Histoire des Patriarches, p. 431. Note that both encomia have been studied in
Sheridan, The Encomium in Coptic Sermons, p. 448-453.
112
See John of Hermopolis, Encomium on St Anthony 35-37 (ed.: Garitte, Pané-
gyrique de saint Antoine, p. 344).
113
Pace Orlandi, Elementi, p. 103, but it is improbable that John of Hermopolis is
identical with the ‘John the Priest’ who wrote the Life of Pesynthius (below p. 40).
114
Copto-Arabic Synaxarium, ed. Basset, V, p. 649-651; ed. Forget, I, p. 217-218.
115
See Fournet, Pisenthios de Coptos.
116
BM Or. 7026, fols 20a-82b Encomium, ed. Budge, p. 75-127.
117
BM Or. 7561 nos 61-62. The first is transcribed in Gabra, Untersuchungen,
p. 31-32.
118
See Dekker, Encomium on Pesynthios, basing her treatment on the first half of the
text (the second half being still under conservation, and thus unavailable for examination).
Cf. also Ead., Bishop Pesynthios of Coptos.
40 P. BOOTH
version witnessed in a fragmentary ninth-century manuscript (W)119; third,

a Bohairic version, preserved in a single manuscript dated to 917/18 (B),
and deriving from the Wadi al-Natrun120; and three Arabic versions, the
most extensive of which has been edited by De Lacy O’Leary (A)121.
According to Dekker, these various versions all derive from a single,
seventh-century Urtext, the closest witness to which is the short Sahidic
version witnessed in S, L, and Q122. The complete manuscript S attributes
the text to the priest John, whom the Encomium presents as Pesynthius’
closest disciple123; whereas the aforementioned codex Q and the Bohairic
version B present both John and Pesynthius’ successor, the bishop Moses124,
as collaborators in the text125.
The earliest, short Sahidic version of the Encomium follows a loose
chronological organisation, and provides only meagre biographical data.
According to its account, Pesynthius was a monk based on the mountain
of Tsenti126 who hid himself when the clerics of Koptos wished to elevate
him to their episcopate. At length, however, those clerics found him hiding
in the region of Jeme127, and presented him for consecration to the patri-
arch Damian, from whom he later received a patriarchal delegation, bear-
ing a festal letter128. Besides this, the sole external event which intrudes
upon the narrative is the Persian invasion, upon which Pesynthius hid once
again upon ‘the mountain of Jeme’129, later, perhaps, returning to Tsenti130,
He died, according to the Encomium, on the 13th of Abīb ‘of this fifth
119
Ed. and trans. Till, Koptische Pergamente-theologischen Inhalts, p. 31-43, from
ÖNB K 9629, K 9551, K 9552.
120
Ed. and trans. Amélineau, Un évêque de Keft.
121
Ed. O’Leary, The Arabic Life of S. Pisentius.
122
Dekker, Encomium on Pesynthios, p. 27-29, offering a significant correction to
Gabra, Untersuchungen, p. 52.
123
See e.g. Encomium, ed. Budge, p. 106.
124
He appears also in Encomium, ed. Budge, p. 123. This Moses is perhaps identical
with that priest Moses who appears in Pesynthius’ archive at P.Pisentius 6, 7, 22.
125
Note that the title to the codex recension Q describes the disciple John as ‘who is
called Matoi’ i.e. ‘soldier’ (Dekker, Encomium on Pesynthios, p. 24).
126
See Encomium, ed. Budge, p. 77. On Tsenti see Timm, Das christlich-koptische
Ägypten, p. 970-974 (who also there cites a Life of Andrew [BnF Ar. 4882, 9], and calls him
an archimandrite and associate of Pesynthius; cf. Winlock – Crum, Monastery of Epipha-
nius, vol. 1, p. 115 n. 1).
127
See Encomium, ed. Budge, p. 92. On Jeme, built amongst the remains of the Ramas-
seum at Medinet Habu, see Timm, Das christlich-koptische Ägypten, p. 1012-1034.
128
Encomium, ed. Budge, p. 82, 106. The second passage (set in the context of the
reception of the patriarch’s clerics) concerns Pesynthius’ refusal of an audience to a sinful
shepherd, an occasion also memorialised in Pesynthius’ archive; see Encomium, ed. Budge,
p. 105-109 and cf. P.Pisentius 54.
129
Encomium, ed. Budge, p. 97, 121.
130
Encomium, ed. Budge, p. 110.
year’131. This combined witness provides us, therefore, with an approxi-

mate chronological frame for Pesynthius’ episcopate: consecration at some
point under Damian (577-c. 606); a tenure which stretched into the Persian
occupation (from 619-620); and death on 7th July 631 or 632 (assuming that
the ‘fifth year’ refers to the indiction)132. A more elaborate chronology has
sometimes been proposed on the basis of additional information contained
within the Arabic hagiographic corpus, from which we can infer that Pesyn-
thius was born in 568/9 and consecrated in 598/9133. But the information
on which these dates are based does not appear in the Coptic corpus, and
their basis is therefore insecure.
Unlike other members of our episcopal circle, Pesynthius does not seem
to leave much literature. Besides the incipit of a sermon134, his sole extant
text seems to be a Coptic Encomium on Saint Onophrius – an Arabic pas-
toral letter-cum-apocalypse is no doubt spurious135. But Pesynthius’ most
famous and most significant corpus of texts comes in the shape of a large
episcopal archive in Coptic, on papyrus and ostracon. The modern discov-
ery of this archive proceeded in two main phases136: first, the appearance
of various documents on the antiquities market throughout the nineteenth
century (now dispersed in various collections); and, second, the discov-
ery of more documents during archaeological explorations in 1911-1914
at the so-called ‘Monastery of Epiphanius’ around the ancient Tomb of
Daga in Western Thebes (modern Šeikh ‘Abd al-Qurna), where was also
discovered the archive of the contemporaneous archimandrite Epipha-
nius137. (It was also here, we will remember, that someone had inscribed
131
Encomium, ed. Budge, p. 126.
132
The date of 7.vii.632 is standard in literature, but depends on how the indiction is
being reckoned. In the Thebaid, at least, the indiction began on 1st May, thus July ‘fifth
indiction’ would indicate 631 not 632. See Bagnall – Worp, Chronological Systems,
p. 22-35.
133
See the useful discussion of Gabra, Untersuchungen, p. 304-308 (with previous
literature). In the Arabic Encomium on Pesynthius (O’Leary, The Arabic Life of S. Pisentius,
p. 460), it is said that Pesynthius became bishop at thirty and then served for thirty-three
years – thus if he died in July 632 he would have become bishop in 598/9 and been born
in 568/9.
134
BL. Or. 7561 no. 60 = P.Lond.Copt. II 167; cf. Winlock – Crum, Monastery of
Epiphanius, vol. 1, p. 201. This is sometimes referred to as De Filio Dei (= CPC 0314).
135
Encomium on Saint Onophrius: BL Or. 6800, ed. and trans. Crum, Discours de
Pisenthius. The opening of this encomium is close to Constantine of Assiut, First Encomium
on Athanasius; see Constantini encomia in Athanasium, ed. Orlandi, p. x. Note that
Orlandi, Basil of Oxyrhynchus refers to the Encomium as spurious, although I am unsure
of the basis for this. Pastoral letter: ed. Périer, Lettre de Pisuntios.
136
For a detailed and lucid account, to which the following is much indebted, see Dekker,
Reconstructing and re-editing.
137
See Winlock – Crum, Monastery of Epiphanius. On Epiphanius himself, ibid., vol. 1,
p. 209-222. That Pesynthius and Epiphanius were contemporaries is suggested in potential
42 P. BOOTH
upon a wall the synodical letter of the patriarch Damian.) Between 1900
and 1912, Eugène Revillout published a much-criticised edition of eighty-
three documents from the first phase (P.Pisentius 1-83)138, from or to which
various texts have since been excluded or added, in particular those which
once belonged to the collection of Thomas Phillips139; while Walter Crum
published various papyri and ostraca – some addressed to ‘Bishop Pesyn-
thius’140; others sent from one ‘Pesynthius’141 – from the second, archae-
ological, phase in 1926142. Some documents from this same phase also
mention a ‘bishop Pesynthius’143; other appearances of the name are more
ambiguous, but some of them, at least, must concern our bishop rather
than a simple namesake144. It is probable that the entire archive was once
located at the Monastery of Epiphanius, and that the bishop Pesynthius
who appears within it lived there alongside the archimandrite145. The
reconstruction and re-editing of that archive is now the focus of a team of
scholars under Jacques van der Vliet146. The project has already produced
a large number of outstanding, ground-breaking articles147. Its full results
are much-anticipated, and will no doubt be transformative.
correspondence between the pair (ibid. p. 213), in the distribution patterns of their respec-
tive letters within the site itself (Dekker, Reconstructing and re-editing, p. 37-38) and in
an anecdote within the Arabic Encomium on Pesynthius (O’Leary, The Arabic Life of
S. Pisentius, p. 451-453). On the chronology of the site see Thirard, Le monastère
d’Épiphane; and the excellent Dekker, A Relative Chronology.
138
Revillout, Textes coptes.
139
Exclusions (P.Pisentius 25bis-ter, 64-83): see Dekker, Reconstructing and re-editing,
p. 35. Additions: see esp. O.CrumST 174-176, 179; Kelly, A Late-Antique Contract (all
from the Phillips collection). For a further unpublished text: van der Vliet, Les archives
de Pesynthios, p. 267; also Id., A letter to a Bishop.
140
These are P.Mon.Epiph. 117, 152, 153, 254, 430, 469, 494. Perhaps also 330, 410,
419, 425, 440, 484. Of these P.Mon.Epiph. 153 is from one Ezekiel, who appears to be a
bishop. A perhaps identical bishop Ezekiel appears in O.Frangé 761. His see is unknown,
as is that of the bishop ‘Serenianus’ who is a correspondent of the archimandrite Epiphanius,
and thus contemporaneous with Pesynthius; see Winlock – Crum, Monastery of Epiphanius,
vol. 1, p. 134.
141
P.Mon.Epiph. 111, 126, 133, 136, 198, 224, 308, 380, 382, 417; perhaps 447.
142
Winlock – Crum, Monastery of Epiphanius, esp. vol. 1, p. 223-225. Many of the
documents from this archaeological phase remain, however, unpublished; see O’Connell,
Ostraca from Western Thebes, p. 117-120.
143
P.Mon.Epiph. 172. A ‘bishop Pesynthius’ also appears in O.Theb.Copt. 27;
O.Crum 25, 286.
144
E.g. P.Mon.Epiph. 177, 208, 515, 538. Other occurences of the name which might
be our Pesynthius (listed in Winlock – Crum, Monastery of Epiphanius, vol. 1, p. 224 n. 10
and p. 225 n. 4): BKU 115, 302; O.Crum 331; O.CrumST 215, 254, 289, 305, 360, 374;
O.Brit.Mus.Copt. I 55 (no. 2) 62 (no. 2).
145
Winlock – Crum, Monastery of Epiphanius, vol. 1, p. 223-225; Dekker, Recon-
structing and re-editing, p. 37-38.
146
See van der Vliet, Pisenthios de Coptos; Id., Les archives de Pesynthios; Calament,
Le programme d’édition.
147
See in the bibl. the entries for van der Vliet, Dekker, and Calament.
The archive of Pesynthius affords us a remarkable, non-hagiographic,

portrait of the life of a late-antique bishop (the sole parallel for which is
the archive of a contemporaneous colleague, to whom we turn below).
Elsewhere I have discussed the Pesynthius archive in more detail, but for
our immediate purposes we should note here its most arresting feature, that
is, the situation of Pesynthius, and the fulfilment of his episcopal duties,
within a monastic context, and not within his actual see of Koptos (with
whose inhabitants he seems seldom to interact). This might suggest that
Pesynthius engaged in regular but not permanent periods of rural isolation,
or that the archive was deposited during the Persian period (619-629),
when Pesynthius had fled from the occupiers. But it has also been sug-
gested that the archive reflects a particular situation, in which Chalcedo-
nian bishops controlled the cities, and their new Severan rivals – like their
co-confessionalists elsewhere in the Near East – resided in rural monas-
teries148. This thesis at present remains uncertain; but it is nevertheless
quite clear that another of Pesynthius’ episcopal colleagues also adopted
such a residence, and at a time long before the appearance of the Persians:
Abraham of Hermonthis.
8. Abraham of Hermonthis
So far we have seen how prominent the episcopal circle of Damian of

Alexandria is within a range of texts and documents; but only one of his
bishops can claim a (probable) contemporaneous portrait. An Egyptian
painted wooden panel depicting an ‘Apa Abraham, bishop’ was purchased
on the antiquities market in 1904 and is now held within the Egyptian
Museum in Berlin. This portrait has been dated, on stylistic grounds, to
the sixth to eighth centuries and, given the relative lack of prominent con-
temporaneous bishops called Abraham149, associated with that Abraham,
bishop of Hermonthis, who is, as we shall see, a known suffragan of Damian
(Martin Krause has even suggested that it might have been produced for
his consecration)150. The precise provenance of the panel is unknown, but
it has been speculated that it might come from Luxor, whence derive other
objects associated with a bishop Abraham: first, a collection of silver
objects discovered in 1899 during the excavation of a church within the
148
First suggested in Wipszycka, The Institutional Church, p. 345. For a larger discussion
see Booth, Towards the Coptic Church.
149
See Worp, Checklist of Bishops, p. 290, 297-299, 309.
150
Krause, Zur Lokalisierung und Datierung; see also Fluck, The Portrait of Apa
Abraham.
44 P. BOOTH
temple of Ramases II of Luxor, one of which (a lid of some kind) bears

the name of ‘Abba Abraham, bishop’ on the flat surface151; and, second,
an ivory diptych listing Abraham amongst the bishops of Hermonthis,
purchased in Luxor in 1903 and now in the British Museum152. It is pos-
sible, therefore, that the ‘Apa Abraham’ both of the painted panel and of
the silver treasure is identical with the Abraham whom the diptych lists
as the fourteenth bishop of Hermonthis, and that all the objects come from
a single church in Luxor153.
Abraham of Hermonthis, in contrast to some other bishops discussed
above, does not feature in the synaxarium or the History of the Patriarchs.
Nevertheless he is known through two means: first, his will, extant on a
Greek papyrus; and, second, an extensive archive of around two-hundred
documents in Coptic, on ostracon and limestone chip154. In the will, which
is now in the British Library (P.Lond. I 77)155, Abraham, who there con-
fesses that he cannot read Greek, and who calls himself ‘bishop and ancho-
rite of the holy mountain of Memnonion [= Jeme],’ bequeaths to his disciple
Victor the Monastery of Phoibammon located on the same mountain156. This
same monastic site – now Deir al-Bahari, on the upper terrace of the ancient
temple of Hapshetsut, and at a short remove from the Monastery of Epipha-
nius – has long been thought to be the main source of Abraham’s archive157,
although this identification was challenged when, in 1948-9, the Société
d’archéologie copte excavated and then published an alternative site, eight
kilometres to the west of the Nile, between Hermonthis and Medinet Habu
(that is, not on the ‘Mountain of Jeme’)158, which Greek and Coptic graffiti
151
Published in Bénazeth, Catalogue général, p. 375-412, nos 309-312, esp. 311. For
the nature of the object bearing Abraham’s name see ibid., p. 383, 384 (with previous
literature); and since Cuvigny, Deux pièces d’argenterie; Wipszycka, Church Treasures,
p. 136-137 (also Ead., The Alexandrian Church, p. 374-375).
152
See Crum, A Greek Diptych.
153
For the association of all the objects with Abraham of Hermonthis and with Luxor
see Krause, Zum Silberschatz von Luxor.
154
Note that Abraham also appears in at least two texts from the Monastery of Epipha-
nius: P.Mon.Epiph. 154, 339; perhaps also 268.
155
Corr. BL I 241. An English translation is available in MacCoull, Apa Abraham.
The dating formula of the will is lost, but Krause, Die Testamente der Äbte, p. 59, 66,
dates it to c. 610. This however must remain uncertain.
156
For the monastic wills extant from this site and from the Monastery of Epiphanius
see also Krause, Die Testamente der Äbte; O’Connell, Transforming Monumental Land-
scapes. More texts relevant to the (later) superiors of the Monastery of Phoibammon are
promised in Garel, Les testaments des supérieurs.
157
Following Crum, Coptic Ostraca, p. xii-xiii.
158
Published in Bachatly, Monastère de Phoebammon. Bachatly had published his
doubts over the identification of the ‘Monastery of Phoibammon’ with Deir al-Bahari ear-
lier, in e.g. Id., Thèbes.
revealed to be dedicated to Saint Phoibammon, and to have included an

oikonomos called Apa Abraham amongst its monks159. Krause, however,
then proposed an elegant solution to the problem, arguing that Abraham
in fact inhabited both monasteries160. He pointed, first, to a precious ostra-
con, of which Abraham himself seems to be the sender, which records
how ‘our father the holy Apa Damian’ sent a festal letter (ⲕⲩⲣⲩⲅⲙⲁ)
southwards – this letter, it seems, had requested the recipient to move
location161; and, second, to a document, of which Abraham is the proba-
ble addressee, in which the clerics and lašanē of Jeme recognise the rights
of the recipient and his successors over the Monastery of Phoibammon,
as though it were a new institution162. Thus Krause has suggested that
Abraham at first inhabited a different ‘Monastery of Phoibammon’ – that
published by the Société d’archéologie copte – but then relocated his
community to a more accessible site at the appeal, perhaps for pastoral
reasons, of the patriarch Damian163.
From this new site derive over two hundred ostraca associated with
Abraham, now distributed in various collections164. From 1893-1896
Édouard Naville, in his excavation of the temple of Hapshetsut, dismantled
the remains of the Monastery of Phoibammon – now known only through
earlier drawing and photographs165 – and distributed some of the Coptic
ostraca which he there discovered to London and to Cairo. Many of these
were published by Crum in 1902166. In 1926-1927, however, when the
Metropolitan Museum of Art expedition under Herbert Winlock removed
from the site the dump from Naville’s earlier excavations, it discovered
159
Bachatly, Monastère de Phoebammon, vol. 2, p. 40 no. 18. Note that Krause, Die
Beziehungen, p. 39 doubts that this Abraham is Abraham of Hermonthis.
160
See Krause, Zwei Phoibammon-Klöster; Id. Die Beziehungen.
161
O.Crum Ad. 59 = Krause, Apa Abraham, vol. 2, p. 326-329 no. 98 = O.Lips.Copt. 10:
‘First of all I greet your sonship, may God bless you. After our father the holy Apa Damian
sent the festal letter southwards to us, strengthening us in the faith of God, we welcomed
it. You know it is not our desire to leave our place, but because of the concern of our holy
father and the effort which they took when they came to us.’ For further analysis see
Krause, Die Beziehungen, p. 32-34.
162
P.KRU 105, with Krause, Die Beziehungen, p. 35-37 (dating the document to the
590s); cf. MacCoull, A Date for P.KRU 105? for an attempt to associate it with the earlier
site. O’Connell, Transforming Monumental Landscapes, p. 263-272 charts the subsequent
transference of the later monastery as private property.
163
Krause, Die Beziehungen; Id., Zwei Phoibammon-Klöster.
164
On the modern discovery of the archive, and of wider evidence from Western Thebes,
see the excellent surveys of Godlewski, Le monastère de St Phoibammon, p. 13-20, 51-59;
Krause, Coptic Texts from Western Thebes; O’Connell, Excavating Late Antique Western
Thebes.
165
These are collected in Godlewski, Le monastère de St Phoibammon, p. 21-50.
166
O.Crum. Crum published other ostraca from the site in O.CrumST, O.CrumVC,
P.KRU; H.R. Hall others in O.Brit.Mus.Copt. I.
46 P. BOOTH
more than one thousand discarded Coptic ostraca, which were in turn dis-
tributed between Cairo and New York – almost all of these (like thousands
of other Coptic ostraca from the region) remain unpublished167.
A prominent figure within the various ostraca from the site is our bishop
Abraham. In his celebrated but unpublished doctoral thesis of 1956, Krause
collected some 114 (edited and unedited) documents belonging to the
archive from various collections, and this remains the starting-point for all
modern research168. Since then, however, various other texts have appeared
in different corpora (e.g. P.MoscowCopt.; O.Brit.Mus.Copt. II; O.Deir
el-Bahari; O.Lips.Copt.; O.Frangé; O.Saint-Marc)169 and in discreet pub-
lications170; many more are still unpublished171. Like the contemporaneous
archive of Pesynthius, therefore, this remarkable archive still lacks an up-
to-date edition.
Besides the aforementioned ostracon which refers to Damian, these
documents offer few chronological clues besides indictional dates, which
range from third to twelfth, giving an approximate range of 584/5-623/4172.
Abraham can perhaps be tied to a lašanē of Jeme, Peter son of Palou,
who is known to have witnessed a solar eclipse on the 14th Phamenoth
(10th March) of the 4th indiction, which scientific research allows us to
match with confidence to 601173. Besides this, his portrait presents him
as an old man, and another document claims that he died in old age174.
167
See O’Connell, Ostraca from Western Thebes, p. 122-128.
168
Krause, Apa Abraham. Krause’s dissertation is summarised in Müller, Die kop-
tische Kirche, p. 283-292, although Krause’s own articles have since altered some of the
information described there.
169
See P.MoscowCopt. 47 (?), 77-78 (within the same collection, note that 45 = Krause 4,
76 = Krause 25, and 80 = Krause 45); O.Brit.Mus.Copt. II nos 1 (?), 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 16, 31 (?),
34; O.Deir el-Bahari 1; O.Lips.Copt. 9 (8, 10-14 are republished texts from the archive);
O.Frangé 792-794; O.Saint-Marc, p. 439. Note that Dekker, Bishop Abraham, p. 30, 41
now adds to this list an unpublished ostracon in Paris (Louvre inv. SN 156), transcribed in
Crum’s notebooks in Oxford.
170
E.g. Krause, Ein Fall friedensrichterlicher Tätigkeit (= SB Kopt. II 906); Kuhn, A
Coptic Limestone (= SB Kopt. III 1378); Krause, Die Kirchenvisitationsurkunden, nos 1-2
(= SB Kopt. III 1379-1380); Calament, Varia Coptica Thebaica, no. 1 (= SB Kopt. IV 2149).
171
See e.g. O’Connell, Ostraca from Western Thebes, p. 128 on the unpublished texts
from or to Abraham in New York.
172
For these see Krause, Apa Abraham, vol. 1, p. 21-24, to which add O.Brit.Mus.
Copt. II 16 (eighth indiction). On prosopographical grounds Dekker, Bishop Abraham,
p. 28 places four such documents in the period 614-619, although this is not certain. She
does not there address O.Crum 313 = Krause 48 (12th indiction).
173
The relevant text was published in Stern, Eine Sonnenfinsternifs. For the date
see Allen, A Coptic Solar Eclipse; also Gilmore – Ray, A Fixed Point in Coptic Chro-
nology. Peter lašanē of Jeme appears also in BKU 70 (= Krause 87), in which Abraham
also appears.
174
P.KRU 65 (the testament of Jacob, a successor as archimandrite). For these arguments
see Krause, Die Testamente der Äbte, p. 59.
From all this, Krause suggested a cautious biographical outline for Abra-
ham: birth in the 540s, consecration as bishop in the 590s, and death in
the 610s175. Drawing on the new texts associated with Abraham in O.Brit.
Mus.Copt. II, Renate Dekker has in a recent publication pointed out that
Abraham is last attested in 619176, and made a convincing case that he
died between May and October 621, during the Persian occupation177.
But all else within his earlier career remains, for now, uncertain178.
9. Towards the Coptic Church
So much, then, for our review of current evidence related to Damian

and his circle. What is the significance of that evidence? Before we can
proceed to a proper appreciation of it, we must first confront two difficult
problems related to the literature produced within the circle: first, its attri-
bution; and, second, its language.
In respect of the former, one of the most remarkable features of our
corpus of texts is that the authors are named and – in striking contrast
with previous and subsequent generations of bishops – named as otherwise
known contemporaries of Damian. In the case of Rufus of Shotep, how-
ever, we have seen above that some serious doubts surround the author-
ship, and it has been suggested that one, more, or all of our attributions
might have become attached to the texts at a later stage in their trans-
mission179, thus being examples of the pervasive Egyptian phenomenon of
(re)ascribing texts to prominent antique authors180. Can we, then, be con-
fident in the attributions? Although the corpora of individual authors are
175
For this reconstruction see e.g. Krause, Die Testamente der Äbte, p. 59 (noting that
the twenty-year episcopate is based on a somewhat insecure extrapolation from the bishop’s
perceived age in his portrait). MacCoull, Apa Abraham, p. 51 repeats her dating of Abraham’s
life to c. 554-624 (as in ODB, ‘Apa Abraham’), but this is not based in firm evidence and
adds speculation to speculation. Nevertheless the terminus ante quem of Abraham’s career is
4th December 634, the firm date (indiction 8, Heraclius 24) of his successor Victor’s own will
(written in 634): see P.KRU 77.
176
Dekker, A Relative Chronology, p. 760, 767, with the correction in Ead., Bishop
Abraham, p. 27 (where she also steps back from an earlier suggestion, based on P.Mon.
Epiph. 466, that Abraham might have been imprisoned under the Persians [p. 24 n. 28]).
177
Dekker, Bishop Abraham, p. 27-28.
178
Cf. also the comments of Wipszycka, The Alexandrian Church, p. 34-36. However
Dekker, Bishop Abraham, p. 30 indicates that she can assign around thirty per cent of
Abraham’s published corpus, on prosopographical grounds, to four periods of Abraham’s
episcopate.
179
See e.g. the caution of Emmel, Coptic Literature, p. 95-96.
180
On the pseudepigraphal ‘cycles’ see Orlandi, Omelie copte, p. 14-17; Id. Coptic
Literature, p. 78-80.
48 P. BOOTH
either too meagre or too complex to substantiate authorship on internal

grounds, the suggestion of pervasive reattribution to this particular group
nevertheless presents some problems. First, no member of it is an obvious
choice, in comparison to the towering figures of the fourth and fifth cen-
turies, for false attribution. It is true, again in total contrast to other gen-
erations of bishops, that the group is well-represented both in the synax-
arium and in the famous quotation from the History of the Patriarchs with
which this article began, and which memorialises the episcopal collabora-
tors of Damian (‘John of Paralos, John his pupil…, Constantine the bishop
and John the blessed Enkleistos’)181. It is possible, therefore, that on the
basis of these two normative traditions later scribes somehow colluded in
ascribing literature to this particular generation of bishops; but it should
then be noted that John of Paralos and Constantine of Assiut are the sole
persons who appear in both traditions, and that John of Hermopolis and
Rufus of Shotep are absent except for single, fleeting, references182. If the
attributions are false, moreover, we are still left with the unprecedented
prominence of Damian’s bishops in other, isolated media, media of which
later generations can have had little sense – for example, in excavated
archives and on individual artefacts. For these reasons, I am inclined to
start from a position which places the burden of (dis)proof upon the scep-
tics, and which assumes that the prominence of the group as the authors of
extant literature is analogous to, and not dependent upon, its prominence
in other media.
In what language was that literature composed? All of the texts are
extant in either Coptic or in Copto-Arabic, and most commentators assume
that Coptic was the language of their composition. This however is dif-
ficult to prove on linguistic grounds alone. Because of both biliteracy and
the mutual interference of Greek and Coptic – for example, the presence
of large numbers of loanwords from the former in the latter – it is difficult
ever to demonstrate a Coptic original, and Enzo Lucchesi maintains the
position that all late antique Coptic literature, in the absence of a cogent
counterproof, presupposes a lost Greek original (as we have seen applied
in the case of Rufus of Shotep and his Gospel commentaries)183. This scep-
ticism has therefore cast some recent doubt on the widespread conviction
of other specialists that our authors wrote in Coptic, rather than Greek184.
See above p. 21.

181
See above p. 21, 36; and cf. Sheridan, The Influence of Origen on Coptic Exegesis,
182
p. 1032-1033.
183
See e.g. Lucchesi, Un corpus éphrémien, p. 114; for comment cf. Boud’hors, The
Coptic Tradition, p. 228.
184
E.g. Emmel, Coptic Literature, p. 94-97.
How then to resolve this impasse? In the late Roman period, let us note,
the choice between Greek and Coptic never reflected a divide between
two reified ethnic groups (Greek vs Egyptian), nor other crude polarisa-
tions (e.g. urban vs rural; northern vs southern; hellenised vs unhellenised;
rich vs poor; orthodox vs heretic; etc.). As various modern studies have
demonstrated, by late antiquity the ethnic division of ‘Greeks’ and ‘Egyp-
tians’ had long since dissolved, biliteracy was widespread, and the literary
choice between Greek and Coptic depended not on identity but on func-
tion and context (formal vs informal; public vs private; etc.)185. Within this
distinction, Greek had hitherto dominated as the language of the episcopate,
and Coptic literature had been restricted to the more esoteric environments
of ascetic groups and monasteries (Gnostic, Manichaean, Christian)186. If
Coptic were indeed the language of our texts, then, it would mark the
transition of the language, for the first time, from the more private world
of ascetic groups to the more public sphere of the episcopate187.
We need not suppose, of course, that all of our texts were composed in
Coptic. But at least in the Thebaid – where, as we shall see below, Coptic
begins, in these very same decades, to intrude into other new contexts – it
is indeed possible that some of our bishops were using it. From the diverse
evidence derived from the monasteries of Pesynthius of Koptos and Abra-
ham of Hermonthis, for example, it is evident that both Greek and Coptic
were in local use, and across a range of registers. In their diverse quotid-
ian correspondence – written, of course, via scribes – both bishops used
Coptic, and although Abraham still considered Greek to be more appro-
priate for his will (unlike, we should note, his successor), he therein con-
fesses that he could not read, let alone write, Greek188. For other formal
compositions, it indeed appears that there existed a genuine choice between
Greek and Coptic. We have seen above that Pesynthius inhabited a space,
the so-called ‘Monastery of Epiphanius’, adorned with patristic texts in
185
See e.g. Clackson, Papyrology, p. 21-23, 39-41; Papaconstantinou, Dioscore et
le bilinguisme, p. 78; Ead., Introduction, p. 7-16; Fournet, Multilingual Environment,
p. 432-434; Johnson, Social Presence of Greek, p. 36-58 (adding an important Syriac
perspective); Zakrzewska, Why Did Egyptians Write in Coptic?. A powerful summary
in van der Vliet, Coptic Documentary Papyri, esp. p. 191-196.
186
Cf. Papaconstantinou, Dioscore et le bilinguisme, p. 85; Zakrzewska, L⁎ as a
Secret Language; Ead., Why Did Egyptians Write in Coptic?
187
For the use of Coptic amongst ascetic groups see e.g. Papaconstantinou, Intro-
duction, p. 5-6, 15-16.
188
P.Lond. I 77 (Kenyon, Catalogue, p. 232, 235): ‘This last will we have dictated
in the Egyptian language (τῇ τῶν Αἰγυπτίων φωνῇ) but I ordered that it also be written
in Greek (Ἑλληνικοῖς ῥήμασιν) ... and having been asked about all the things interpreted
for me in the Egyptian language (διὰ τῆς Αἰγυπτιακῆς διαλαλείας) by the notary below,
they were acceptable to me…’ For his successor’s Coptic will (dated to 634): P.KRU 77.
50 P. BOOTH
both languages, and that when the Synodical Letter of the patriarch
Damian was received there, no doubt in Greek, it was soon after inscribed
upon the walls in Coptic189. Indeed, the formal literature either discovered
or referred to in materials from the Theban region shows that Greek was
then still used in liturgical texts; but that Coptic was widespread as a lan-
guage of literature190. From the Monastery of Epiphanius, for example,
derives a famous Coptic codex (c. 600) containing several Christian dia-
logues191; and it was near here, in 2005, that a team under Tomasz Górecki
uncovered another precious codex (c. 650-c. 700) containing Pesynthius’
short Sahidic Life (Q above)192, which seems to derive from an earlier
Coptic Urtext193. Our Theban bishops, then, seem to have been surrounded
with various examples of formal Coptic literature, and in this perspective it
would seem far less problematic to presume that a text such as Pesynthius’
Encomium on Onophrius might have been composed in Coptic.194
What would be the significance of this departure? Critics who have
presumed the language of the texts to be Coptic have also sometimes seen
its use as indicative of a new, ‘nationalist’ sentiment. Thus with reference
to the literature attributed to Damian’s bishops, Tito Orlandi, for example,
has argued that Coptic had become, in this period, a language of political
resistance, that ‘nationalism pervades almost all the texts,’ and that ‘this is
a sign of the “proud isolation” in which the Coptic church was enclosing
itself’195; while Philippe Blaudeau has proposed that cultural production
under Damian represents ‘un renforcement de l’affirmation nationale dif-
fusée par les œuvres coptes’, and speculated that this occurred after the
failure of Damian’s pretensions to dominate the wider Severan common-
wealth in his earlier tenure196.
See above p. 23.

189
See the discussion of Winlock – Crum, Monastery of Epiphanius, vol. 1, p. 196-

190
208; and now Boud’hors, Copie et circulation des livres. On the Monastery of Phoibam-
mon see Boud’hors – Garel, La bibliothèque du monastère de Saint-Phoibammon.
Revealing of the possible range of texts available in the region is a famous contemporaneous
Coptic booklist (c. 600) inscribed upon a Theban ostracon; see Coquin, Le catalogue du
couvent de Saint Élie.
191
See Crum – Ehrhard, Der Papyruscodex, p. 1-41, with xi for the date. For the
reported origin of the codex at the Monastery of Epiphanius see O’Connell, Excavating
Late Antique Western Thebes, p. 258.
192
See Górecki, Sheikh Abd el-Gurna.
193
Dekker, Encomium on Pesynthios, p. 23-28. For further contemporaneous Coptic
codices from the region, now in the British Museum, see P.Lond.Copt. II xxxiii-xliv.
194
For similar points cf. Camplani, Il copto e la Chiesa copta, esp. p. 148-150.
195
Orlandi, Coptic Literature, p. 74-78.
196
Blaudeau, Le voyage, p. 360.
The existence of ‘nationalism’ within late antique Egypt has of course

long been challenged, not least because contemporaries never advocated
political secessionism, even in those texts which proved most hostile to
the religious policies of the emperors at Constantinople197. It appears
– although the dating of the texts is often far from secure – that in the
period from Chalcedon to the Muslim conquest (451-640), anti-Chalce-
donian ascetics began to produce so-called ‘plerophoric’ narratives, that
is, hagiographic texts which celebrated the resistance of local monks and
bishops to the Chalcedonian emperors and their representatives – for
example, in the hagiographic corpora of Longinus, Abraham of Farshut,
or Macarius of Tkow198. These texts cast the emperor in the role of perse-
cuting heretic; present opposition to Chalcedon as the natural confession
of Egyptian Christians; and sometimes intimate an ethnic distinction of
orthodox and heretic. But there is never a suggestion that political seces-
sion is an inspiration. Indeed, within the texts of our bishops, an overt
political, or even sectarian, agenda is in fact elusive. Thus it is conspicuous
that Chalcedon, and the Chalcedonian emperor, are more or less absent199,
and if it were not for archaeological finds – the patristic inscriptions which
adorned the walls of the Monastery of Epiphanius, or the derivation thence
of the aforementioned codex of doctrinal dialogues200 – one might pre-
sume a concern with dogma to be altogether lacking. There is little basis,
then, for supposing that the context for our texts is a rising desire for
political independence from the Roman empire.
There is no doubt that the language of ‘nationalism’ is inappropriate
in the context of our circle. But new forms of political or cultural self-
consciousness might still be perceptible within the texts in more subtle
forms. Thus John of Hermopolis – in his encomium On Anthony – includes
197
The classic contributions are Jones, Ancient Heresies (p. 286-290 on Egypt);
Winkelmann, Ägypten und Byzanz, esp. p. 181-182; Wipszycka, Le nationalisme; now
also Palme, Political Identity. For the older position cf. e.g. Müller, Die koptische Kirche.
198
For Longinus: Vivian, Humility and Resistance. Macarius: Johnson, Panegyric
on Macarius of Tkôw. Abraham: Goehring, Politics, Monasticism, and Miracles. On this
literature in general see Johnson, Anti-Chalcedonian Polemics.
199
Such polemic as exists focuses on more marginal groups. Besides John of Paralos’
Against Heretical Books (and his entry in the synaxarium, above n. 44) see also e.g.
Constantine of Assiut, Second Encomium on Athanasius (naming Arius, Mani, Valentinian,
Marcion, Apollinarius, Eutyches, and Julian [of Halicarnassus]); Second Encomium on
Claudius (e.g. Godron, Saint Claude, p. 626-640, on a Melitian); Rufus of Shotep, Com-
mentary on Luke 3 (on the Gospels of Marcion and of the Manichaean). Explicit reference
to Chalcedon is restricted to Damian’s Synodical Letter (= Winlock – Crum, Monastery
of Epiphanius, vol. 2, p. 150; Michael the Great, Chronicle 10.14, ed. Chabot, vol. 4,
p. 360]). On the silence around Chalcedon cf. Booth, Towards the Coptic Church.
200
See above p. 23-24, 50.
52 P. BOOTH
a much-cited passage which might suggest that he harboured some form of

regional and ethnic self-consciousness, for he first celebrates Egypt as the
crucible of Christian saints, and then points out to his audience, against
its apparent expectations, that the great ascetic Anthony was ‘an Egyptian’
(ⲟⲩⲣⲙⲚⲕⲏⲙⲉ)201. Did John’s colleagues share such sentiments? In
the wider corpus of literature which we have explored above, in as much
as it is at present accessible, one in fact struggles to discover thoughts of
a similar kind202. But one obvious theme which other authors share with
John is the celebration of local saints: for example, in Pesynthius of Koptos’
Encomium on Onophrius and Constantine of Assiut’s Encomia on Athanasius
(even Constantine’s encomia On Claudius and On John of Heraclea are
devoted to saints who are supposed, despite their origins, to have died
within Egypt). We must of course be sensitive to the fact that such texts
cannot represent the total of our authors’ output, and might therefore speak
less to their concerns than those of their later transmitters. But it never-
theless seems clear that one element of that output, at least, was a celebra-
tion of local saints of the period before Chalcedon.
Might we conclude, then, that our bishops were cultivating, if not
nationalism per se, then the cultural distinctiveness and independence of
their region, perhaps using Coptic to further emphasise that theme? This
is a seductive view, but I do not think that this is the most obvious con-
cern or motivation of our authors. For the more immediate, if also more
mundane, context for their apparent flirtations with Coptic, and the cul-
tivation of distant local saints, is not some grand ideological vision which
imagined Egypt’s political or cultural separation, but rather the recent crea-
tion of the Severan episcopate within local landscapes, and the residence
of some of its bishops within rural monasteries. Indeed, if it is agreed
that Coptic literature had hitherto been contained within ascetic milieus,
then we can appreciate that in the context of such persons as Pesynthius
and Abraham – bishops who operated from monasteries – this distinction
between episcopal and monastic, public and private, must have been
muddied, encouraging a reconfiguration in the functional distinction of
Greek and Coptic literatures203. Within this perspective, then, one need
201
John of Hermopolis, Encomium on St Anthony 5-9; cf. also John of Hermopolis,
Encomium on St Mark, ed. Orlandi, p. 12-18. These passages have sometimes been
read as ‘nationalist’; see e.g. Orlandi, Coptic Literature, p. 76-77; Id., Letteratura copta,
p. 118; Blaudeau, Le voyage, p. 360. Most recently Moawad, John of Shmoun dismisses
the ‘nationalist’ reading but still regards John as defending the threatened cultural and
ethnic identities of ‘the Copts’ and their ‘Coptic Church’.
202
On the over-interpretation of John of Hermopolis see the criticisms of Wipszycka,
Le nationalisme, p. 90-92; Behlmer, Patriotische Heilige, p. 168-172.
203
For the same suggestion cf. Papaconstantinou, Dioscore et le bilinguisme, p. 85;
Camplani, Il copto e la Chiesa copta, p. 147.
not lurch into assumptions of implicit separatism in supposing that, at

least in the Thebaid, some bishops might have used Coptic to compose
‘episcopal’ literature.
The recent establishment of the Severan episcopate – and, again, not
some nationalist or separatist surge – also provides, I suggest, the most
immediate perspective in which to interpret the contents of that litera-
ture. For the extensive cultural production in and around the patriarchate
of Damian is significant, in the first instance, not so much for its political
or cultural agenda, which does not seem to move much further than a (at
least partial) focus upon local heroes. It is significant for its simple exist-
ence, and thus for its witness to the concerted attempts of the arriviste
bishops both to assert themselves as Christian authorities, and to endow
the new church with its own literature. Seen in this more localised perspec-
tive, the striking absence of Chalcedon from our texts, if not an illusion
of transmission, might be seen as a deliberate silence (for fear of provok-
ing, or perhaps acknowledging, a local rival); the focus on the patristic
period as a desire to legitimise the new church through a claim to the pre-
Chalcedonian past; and the celebration of local saints as an attempt to
exploit their popular (rural) shrines, in competition with their (urban)
Chalcedonian rivals204. Whether writing in Greek or in Coptic, therefore,
I would suggest that the most immediate inspiration for the impressive
output of these bishops was not an ideological programme which envi-
sioned the political or cultural separation of their region; it was the more
prosaic, tentative attempt to differentiate their nascent, local, church from
its more established, transregional, rival.
10. Conclusion
At some point between May 608 and October 610, soon after the death
of Damian of Alexandria, a person proclaiming himself ‘Kame son of
Paul, the man of Jeme, in the nome of Ermant [= Hermonthis]’ decided
204
See Papaconstantinou, The Cult of Saints, p. 359-360, accepting the argument of
Wipszycka (above n. 148) and suggesting that Constantine of Assiut’s celebration of
St Claudius at the village of Pohe, near Assiut, might indicate that ‘his episcopal authority
[was] restricted to a rural network’. To this we might also add the village of Hameioor, near
Assiut, where Constantine performed the First Encomium for John of Heraclea [Garitte,
Constantin, p. 296]). Papaconstantinou also notes that John of Hermopolis, Encomium on
St Anthony 38 (ed.: Garitte, Panégyrique de saint Antoine, p. 346), places its performance
‘before a shrine far from the city’ (although he was not, according to the title, bishop at
the time) but also suggests that Pesynthius of Koptos perhaps performed his Encomium on
Onophrius in the saint’s shrine near to the village of Pallas, near to Koptos (so also Crum,
Discours de Pisenthius, p. 40-41).
54 P. BOOTH
to inscribe upon a rock a crude graffito. That graffito consists of a Roman

regnal formula205. It commences with an invocation of the Trinity and of
the Virgin, and then gives the date both as the eighth year of Phocas
(November 609 to October 610) and as the twelfth ‘cycle’ sc. the indic-
tion (in the Thebaid, May 608 to April 609). So far, perhaps, so familiar.
But our graffito is in fact a remarkable piece of writing. For it is a unique
example of a dated Roman regnal formula inscribed in Coptic. Indeed, it
is evident that Kame, man of Jeme, was attempting to render into Coptic
equivalents the Greek imperial titulature, while seeming to avoid, where
possible, Greek loanwords. His understanding of Greek was however imper-
fect – αὔγουστος, for example, he rendered as ⲉⲧⲥⲱⲧⲙ ‘who hears’, as
though it were ἀκουστής vel sim.206 – and his effort has been called ‘very
incompetent’207. But that effort is nevertheless one precious indication that
the world of Kame, the world of Western Thebes around 600, was trans-
forming. It is perhaps not coincidental that the graffito was placed within
the hills around Jeme, within short walking distance of those monasteries
which, around the same period, served as the residences of two prominent
members of the emergent Severan episcopate: Pesynthius of Koptos and
Abraham of Hermonthis.
In this paper I have tried to encompass as much as possible of the
remarkable evidence produced within this new episcopate, evidence which
will no doubt expand as more manuscripts (in particular, Copto-Arabic
manuscripts) and more documents (in particular, Coptic documents) are
catalogued and edited. I have argued that the breadth of this evidence is
not an illusion created through later patterns of transmission and deposi-
tion; it is rather the product of a particular moment, the visible vestige of
the creation of a new episcopate under Damian’s predecessor Peter IV, the
residence of some of its members within rural monasteries (and, hence, the
deposition of their archives), and what appears to have been a concerted
effort, on the part of the new incumbent, to endow their ascendant church
with its own literature. Their principal concern, I have suggested, was
to establish, legitimise, and differentiate their parvenu church in the face
of Chalcedonian competition. Whether or not one accepts their claims
to represent the authentic, local tradition, such claims should not be
allowed to obscure the radical bifurcation of the episcopate which occurs
in this period, and not before.
Facsilime and edition in Winlock – Crum, Monastery of Epiphanius, vol. 1, p. 11.

205
Cf. Winlock – Crum, Monastery of Epiphanius, vol. 1, p. 11 n. 6, suggesting

206
ἀκουστός.
207
Winlock – Crum, Monastery of Epiphanius, vol. 1, p. 11. More charitable is
Worp, A Forgotten Coptic Inscription. On the text see also Gonis, Some Egyptian Datings.
Against some recent scepticism, I have argued that some bishops in

the Thebaid might have composed their texts in Coptic, and that the most
immediate context for that composition was the establishment of the new
Severan episcopate. If that is correct, however, this intrusion of Coptic
into new contexts must also have contributed to, and perhaps drawn some
inspiration from, a much wider process. Indeed, as Arietta Papaconstanti-
nou and others have argued, it is at this same moment, and in this same
region, that a small number of contemporaries were choosing Coptic in
other contexts from which, even in the previous generation, it had other-
wise been excluded208. Besides our aforementioned graffito, from c.550
onwards the language is first used in a small number of quasi-legal or legal
documents from the Thebaid209, including in the archives of Pesynthius
and of Abraham210. Each of these intrusions no doubt also has its own,
more localised context – the intensification of legal proceedings under
Justinian, for example, in part explaining the use of Coptic in quasi-legal
arbitrations211. But the same intrusions must also have reinforced each
other in a manner which is now impossible to perceive. In this perspective,
the adoption of Coptic for episcopal literature might also be seen, then, as
a participation in, and reinforcement of, a far wider pattern through which
Coptic was gaining ground, in the Thebaid, as a language of social and
cultural expression212.
There is little evidence that this process was driven through a conscious
ideological agenda. But at the same time it nevertheless seems clear that
in the period between Justinian and the Persian occupation (565-619),
the relationship of Egypt to the wider world was, at various levels, being
reconfigured. Both Wolf Liebeschuetz and Peter Sarris, for example, have
used wider evidence from Egypt to suggest that this same period was one
of heightened regionalisation in the political and socio-economic spheres,
and an increasing disconnect between Constantinople and its provinces.
According to this argument, after the attempts of Justinian to confront
the burgeoning economic power of office-holding, landowning aristo-
crats in the provinces, the accession of Justin II (565) marked the aban-
donment of such attempts, and witnessed instead the rising independence
208
See esp. Papaconstantinou, Dioscore et le bilinguisme.
209
See Fournet, Sur les premiers documents juridiques coptes, updating MacCoull,
Dated and Datable Coptic Documentary Hands. Cf. now also Förster et al., Une misthô-
sis copte.
210
For good guides see Clackson, Papyrology; Ead., Coptic or Greek? esp. p. 95-99;
Fournet, Multilingual Environment, p. 437-441.
211
See MacCoull, Coptic documentary papyri; Ead., Niches in an Ecosystem.
212
Cf. Papaconstantinou, Dioscore et le bilinguisme, p. 83.
56 P. BOOTH
of provincial elites manifested, most of all, in Justin’s remarkable conces-

sion, to bishops and to local landowners, of the centuries-old, imperial
prerogative to appoint provincial governors (in 569)213. As a result, pro-
vincial imperial government became indistinguishable from local land-
owning elites, so that the administration was now in the full control of
groups with vested interests in their provinces214. Indeed, a further index
of this disconnect was an apparent rise in aristocratic provincial rebellions.
Thus after the reign of Justin II the Chronicle of John of Nikiu (c. 690)
places a series of incidents – the arrest of the Alexandrian Augustalis
Aristomachus under Tiberius215; the so-called ’Aykǝlāh revolt within the
northwestern Delta under Maurice216; and the rebellion of ‘five cities’ in
the Delta under Phocas217 – which share a common theme: the growing
power of provincial aristocrats-cum-administrators, and their willing-
ness to assert themselves against the capital218. We need not perceive in
these rebellions a grand political secessionism, just as we need not per-
ceive such secessionism in the corpora of our bishops. But it is neverthe-
less notable that a process of heightened regionalisation within both the
ecclesial sphere (the creation of a rival Severan church, its alienation from
co-confessionalists elsewhere, and its attempts to create its own literature)
and the legal sphere (the heightened use of Coptic for legal documents),
is mirrored in a process of heightened regionalisation within the political
and socio-economic spheres.
In the next generations these processes would all again progress hand-in-
hand. As the Persian and then Muslim occupations rendered the burgeoning
213
Justinian, Novels, p. 149. A nice illustration of this process at work occurs in John
of Nikiu, Chronicle 97, in which a council of local worthies discusses the reinstatement of
the Augustalis John.
214
See Liebeschuetz, Decline and Fall, p. 269-283; Sarris, Economy and Society
esp. p. 228-234. Both scholars draw inspiration from Banaji, Agrarian Change; but see
earlier Winkelmann, Ägypten und Byzanz, p. 165-166, 178-182. For the same conflation
of administrators and local elites (but emphasising cooperation, rather than competition,
with the state) cf. Gascou, Les grands domaines.
215
John of Nikiu, Chronicle 95, stating the Aristomachus was from Nikiu (cf. PLRE III
Aristomachus 2).
216
John of Nikiu, Chronicle 97. For reasons I cannot explain here, the place which the
Chronicle calls ’Aykǝlāh vel sim. was in the region of Metelis (though is not identical with
it as sometimes stated).
217
Ibid. 105. On the five cities concerned see Booth, Shades of Blues and Greens,
p. 582 n. 95. John of Nikiu, Chronicle 97, ed. Zotenberg, p. 178, also describes the rebel-
lion of ‘a powerful man (ḫayyāl) called ’Azāryās in the city of ’Akmim [= Panopolis/
Shmin],’ who assembled a force of ‘black slaves and brigands’ and seized the imperial
taxes.
218
See Liebeschuetz, Decline and Fall, p. 269-272; Sarris, Economy and Society,
p. 228-234. On the Egyptian revolts see also Jarry, La révolte dite d’Aykelâh; Carile,
Giovanni di Nikious, p. 133-138.
political gap with Constantinople a chasm, and as Egypt disengaged from

the networks of fiscal and economic exchange which had bound together
the eastern Mediterranean in the late Roman period219, so also did the use
of Coptic in more formal contexts mushroom220, and so too did subse-
quent generations of Severan Christians go far further than their found-
ing fathers in elevating Coptic as their chosen medium of expression, and
in transforming the process of ecclesiogenesis begun under Peter IV and
Damian into one of ethnogenesis. Under Muslim rule, those generations
would put to grander ends the claims to the pre-Chalcedonian past, the
focus upon local heroes, and the hint of ethnic self-consciousness which we
can perhaps detect in nascent form in the corpus of John of Hermopolis. In
this later discourse, Chalcedonism becomes an alien, ephemeral, aberra-
tion; the effective past is reduced to the level of the regional; and the late
antique ‘Romans’ transform into a foreign, persecuting people in distinc-
tion from the indigenous, victimised ‘Copts’221. This distorting lens upon
the late antique past can still exert a powerful pull on the modern imagina-
tion. But if as historians we wish to speak in legitimate terms of something
called ‘the Coptic church’, we should seek its first shoots not with the
apostle Mark, nor with Athanasius, nor even with Dioscorus. We should
seek them with the episcopate first formed under the patriarchs Peter and
Damian, and with that remarkable circle of bishops whose scattered texts
still speak to their quiet revolution.
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University of Oxford Phil Booth

St Peter’s College
Oxford, OX1 2DL, UK
philip.booth@theology.ox.ac.uk
Abstract — This article explores the explosion of evidence which occurs around
the creation of the Severan episcopate in Egypt. Drawing together a number of
modern studies, it first sets out the known careers and corpora of the patriarch
Damian of Alexandria (577-c. 606) and several of his prominent bishops: John of
Paralos, Constantine of Assiut, Rufus of Shotep, John of Hermopolis, Pesynthius
of Koptos, and Abraham of Hermonthis. It then argues that, even if their output
contributed to a process of heightened provincialisation in this period, the most
immediate and important context for appreciating that output is not a grand politi
cal or cultural separatism, but the bishops’ need both to legitimise and to distin-
guish their new Church in the face of Chalcedonian competition.

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A CIRCLE OF EGYPTIAN BISHOPS AT THE END OF

ROMAN RULE (c. 600)

It is perhaps not unfair to suggest that such persons as John of Paralos,

Le Muséon 131 (1-2), 21-72. doi: 10.2143/MUS.131.1.3284834 - Tous droits réservés.

The decision to name and to celebrate these collaborators of the

position in relation to the Severan churches elsewhere, and to determine

In 1883 Gaston Maspero removed from Western Thebes to Cairo a

twelve anathemas of Cyril of Alexandria13; in Coptic, three citations from

is therefore remarkable both for its impact on Syriac sources – a product

Damian49). But there also survives in Arabic an unpublished sermon on

The career and corpus of Constantine, bishop of Assiut (= Lykopolis/

him in Upper-Egyptian recension of the synaxarium we ascertain that

attributed to Constantine64. The most substantial are four encomia from

Indeed, several of Constantine’s works are not extant except in Arabic73.

Under the 20th Kiyahk, the Upper-Egyptian synaxarium contains a

in a dossier of four texts dedicated to St Claudius, in which the other two

As we have observed above, the Upper-Egyptian synaxarium states

bishop of Shotep’94. It is possible, of course, that the attribution is inau-

Sheridan sins in presupposing a Coptic text, then it is as dubious to insin-

Alongside John of Paralos and Constantine of Assiut, the History of the

(ⲁⲓⲧⲉⲓ ⲉϥⲟ ⲙⲡⲣⲉⲥⲃⲩⲧⲉⲣⲟⲥ ⲁⲩⲱ ⲛⲉⲅⲕⲗⲏⲥⲧⲟⲥ)111. In the latter

Of Damian’s various known suffragans, perhaps the most famous

version witnessed in a fragmentary ninth-century manuscript (W)119; third,

year’131. This combined witness provides us, therefore, with an approxi-

The archive of Pesynthius affords us a remarkable, non-hagiographic,

So far we have seen how prominent the episcopal circle of Damian of

temple of Ramases II of Luxor, one of which (a lid of some kind) bears

revealed to be dedicated to Saint Phoibammon, and to have included an

9. Towards the Coptic Church

So much, then, for our review of current evidence related to Damian

either too meagre or too complex to substantiate authorship on internal

See above p. 21.

See above p. 23.

See the discussion of Winlock – Crum, Monastery of Epiphanius, vol. 1, p. 196-

The existence of ‘nationalism’ within late antique Egypt has of course

a much-cited passage which might suggest that he harboured some form of

not lurch into assumptions of implicit separatism in supposing that, at

to inscribe upon a rock a crude graffito. That graffito consists of a Roman

Facsilime and edition in Winlock – Crum, Monastery of Epiphanius, vol. 1, p. 11.

Cf. Winlock – Crum, Monastery of Epiphanius, vol. 1, p. 11 n. 6, suggesting

Against some recent scepticism, I have argued that some bishops in

of provincial elites manifested, most of all, in Justin’s remarkable conces-

political gap with Constantinople a chasm, and as Egypt disengaged from

Allen, A Coptic Solar Eclipse = E.B. Allen, A Coptic Solar Eclipse Record, in

‘Awad, Mimar al-šahīda Dimyāna = G.F. ‘Awad, Mimar al-šahīda Dimyāna,

Nubia Christiana. The Włodzimierz Godlewski Jubilee Volume on the Occasion

Constantini encomia in Athanasium, tr. Orlandi = T. Orlandi (tr.), Constantini

Crum, Theological Texts = W.E. Crum, Theological Texts from the Coptic

Goehring, Politics, Monasticism, and Miracles = J.E. Goehring, Politics,

Jarry, La révolte dite d’Aykelâh = J. Jarry, La révolte dite d’Aykelâh, in Bul-

Krause, Die Beziehungen = M. Krause, Die Beziehungen zwischen den beiden

Papaconstantinou, Dioscore et le bilinguisme = A. Papaconstantinou, Dioscore

Salīm – Miniāwī, Min diyārāt al-ābā’, 4 = N. Salīm – Ğ. Miniāwī, Min diyārāt

Constantin d’Assiout, in A. Boud’hors – C. Louis (éds), Études coptes XIII.

Zakrzewska, Why Did Egyptians Write in Coptic? = E.D. Zakrzewska, Why

University of Oxford Phil Booth

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University of Oxford Phil Booth