The Age of Monks and Empires · 451-642 · Egypt
Cyrilline / Miaphysite Egyptian Christianity
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About This Movement
When the Council of Chalcedon defined Christ in 451 as one person known in two natures, the Egyptian church heard a betrayal of Cyril of Alexandria, its greatest teacher, and refused the council's wording. Its patriarch Dioscorus was deposed at Chalcedon itself, and for the next two centuries Alexandria had two rival lines of bishops — one backed by Constantinople, one held by most Egyptians — with the Miaphysite line surviving deposition, exile and periodic imperial force. It was carried by the monasteries of the Egyptian desert and increasingly in the Coptic language rather than Greek, and for two decades it sheltered Severus of Antioch, the exiled Syrian patriarch who became the movement's great theologian. When Arab armies took Egypt in 642 the imperial pressure simply ended, and the church that had refused Chalcedon was left standing.
Sources
- Severus of Antioch, Select Letters (ed./trans. E. W. Brooks, 2 vols, 1902-04) (primary) — Inside voice of the anti-Chalcedonian leadership in exile in Egypt (518-538); Greek originals lost, survives in Syriac translation; Brooks's English translation is old but standard and online.
- History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church of Alexandria (attrib. Severus ibn al-Muqaffa') (primary) — The Miaphysite church's own continuous narrative of its Alexandrian patriarchs; Arabic compilation of earlier Coptic sources; ed./English trans. B. Evetts in Patrologia Orientalis 1, 5, 10 (1904-15), online at tertullian.org.
- John of Nikiu, Chronicle (trans. R. H. Charles, 1916) (primary) — Egyptian Miaphysite bishop's world chronicle ending with the Arab conquest (642) - the era's terminus seen from inside; survives only via Ethiopic from Arabic; Charles's English translation online. Plus Coptic/Greek documentary papyri (e.g. Dioscorus of Aphrodito archive) for ordinary texture.
- W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement (1972) (secondary) — Still the standard single narrative of the anti-Chalcedonian movement 451 onward; dated in places (terminology 'Monophysite' now avoided) but widely available.
- Stephen J. Davis, The Early Coptic Papacy (2004) (secondary) — Modern history of the Egyptian church's leadership and identity in exactly this window; accessible English monograph (AUC Press).
- Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 2 (Constantine to c.600), ch. 3, 'Greek Christianities' (F. W. Norris); cf. ch. 4 (D. Bundy) (reference) — Reference-tradition anchor for eastern-Roman (incl. Egyptian) developments to c.600.