The Greek and Eastern Churches/Part 2/Division 5/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
THE TURKISH PERIOD AND MODERN EGYPT
The rise of the Turkish power brought trouble to the Copts in common with Eastern Christians of other races. At first the Turks appeared as mercenaries of the Arabs, serving under Arabian caliphs. But gradually their genius for war carried them to the front, till at length Turkish sultans usurped the authority of the caliphate. As early as the eleventh century a band of rebel Turks robbed the monasteries of the Thebaid and murdered many of the monks. The power of the Fatimite dynasty was now nearly extinct, and the Egyptian governors were appointed by the soldiers without any reference to the caliph. When the Seleucid Turks were supreme over the East, the ill-treatment of the pilgrims at Jerusalem led to the interference of Western Europe, and so provoked the Crusades. The result, while in many respects disappointing, brought some relief to the Greek and Syrian Christians. The progress of the Turks was arrested; the doom of Constantinople was postponed; Jerusalem was ruled by a Christian king for nearly a century, and Syria by Christian princes more or less for two hundred years. But all this brought no advantage to the Copts. In regard to the pilgrimages they were even worse off than before. Hitherto, while they had to take their chance of rough treatment equally with other Christians, the Copts had also free access to the holy sites, since Islam was scornfully indifferent to the rivalry of the Christian sects. But when Jerusalem was in the hands of the Latins, although the masters of the city were graciously willing to admit a comparative orthodoxy in the creed of the Greek Church, in common with that Church they treated the Monophysite Copts as heretics, and forbade them access to the Holy City. Thus "Jerusalem delivered" was barred against the national Church of Egypt by the Christian powers of Europe. The Copts had to wait for the recovery of Palestine by the Saracens before they could renew their pilgrimages to the tomb of Christ.
The Coptic patriarch at the time of the first Crusade was Chail iv., who had signed a document promising to abolish simony and renounce certain irksome claims of his predecessors, as a condition of his appointment when a monk in a convent near Sinjara. No sooner was he in power than he repudiated his pledge, threatening excommunication on any one who should bring it up against him. He even procured a synod's sentence of excommunication against Chenouda, the bishop of Misr, who had taken the lead in the simony question. It cannot but strike us as deplorable that, when the Crusades were beginning in a passion of religious enthusiasm, and when the Christians of the West were opening up long-closed communications with the East, the Coptic Church in Egypt should be represented by so unworthy a patriarch as this Chail.
The policy of the Crusaders revived for a time the flickering flame of the Melchite patriarchate, which was then held by Cyril, a prelate who was celebrated both as a physician and as an author. This ecclesiastic hoped great things from the victories of the Crusaders; but he was grievously disappointed. Unlike the neighbouring province of Syria, Egypt was never wrested from the Saracen power. The Fatimite caliphs were no friends to the Turkish rule, and when they heard of the approach of the first Crusade they tried to make terms with the invaders from the West. But the situation was complicated by the fact that in a period of temporary weakness among the Turks, after the reign of the three strong sultans who had established the Seleucid dynasty, the Fatimites had recovered Jerusalem. When they perceived that the Crusaders were enemies of all Islam, and not only foes of the Turks, they were unable to proceed with their negotiations. They, too, were put on the defensive, and the fall of Jerusalem was a great blow to them, while it brought no relief to their Christian subjects in Egypt. At the same time Cyril was alarmed for his ecclesiastical prestige, on learning that Baldwin had obtained a papal bull granting all new conquests from the infidels to the patriarchate of Jerusalem—now a schismatic Latin patriarchate. Since Egypt was never conquered by the Crusaders, however, this act of Roman usurpation did not really affect him. Meanwhile, although there were invasions of Egypt by the Crusaders, since they were not able to conquer the country, the native Christians gained nothing by them.
The feeble Fatimite dynasty, which had recovered its power temporarily at the end of the tenth century, declined in the second half of the next century. Aded, the last caliph of this line, saw his dominions ravaged, both by the Turks and by the Kurds under Shawer, who burnt Babylon—with what consequences to the Christians we do not know (a.d. 1168), and overrun more than once by Amaric, the Christian King of Jerusalem. On the death of Aded in the year 1171, the famous Saladin succeeded to the government of Egypt, with the title of sultan, which he held under the caliph of Bagdad, and no Fatimite caliph was appointed. But a shadowy caliphate of the Abbasidæ line was now restored for the sake of appearances.
About this time the Coptic Church was disturbed by a controversy concerning the confessional, a glance at which throws some light on its customs and life, and so affords a relief from the dreary succession of quarrels concerning episcopal appointments and fines and exactions that occupies too much of the history. There had grown up a strange custom of confessing to a censer. The censer that used to be swung in connection with the pronunciation of absolution had been taken by itself and placed in the corner of a room, for the penitent to make his confession before it in private without the aid of any priest. There are two ways of regarding this curious practice. It may be looked upon as a protest against the confessional, an effort to get free of the priestly interference with the liberty of the laity of which that institution is the most powerful instrument. Here was an expedient by means of which the penitent could dispense with the priest. Considered in this way the irregularity was indicative of a revolt against sacerdotalism, an anticipation of the great Protestant idea that Luther expounds in his tractate on Christian Liberty—"the priesthood of all Christians." But, in view of the stagnation and superstition of the times in the Eastern Churches, we cannot press this point. The presence of the censer is too suspiciously indicative of a magical element in religion, as though this material object with its ascending smoke were credited with performing the high office of priestly intercession. One grave reason offered for the practice was the notoriously bad character of many of the priests. Meanwhile there was this basis for the superstition of the censer, that in the regular services the incense burnt at the commencement of the liturgy was supposed to be in some mysterious way connected with the remission of sins of the congregation through their private confession. The practice was opposed by Mark the son of Kunbar, a priest who preached earnestly against it. His opponents got him excommunicated on a charge of having dismissed his wife and induced some one else to marry her. Still he preached, however, insisting on the necessity of confessing to a priest in order to obtain absolution. The people flocked to him in crowds, both to hear his sermons and to confess to him. The matter became so serious that a synod, said to have consisted of sixty bishops, met and pronounced against him. He was deposed, and then he appealed to the Moslem power, with a memorial stating that he had preached nothing contrary to canonical authority or the teaching of the Fathers, and demanding a fair trial according to the rules of the Church. Such a reference to the government is most significant, since it shows that in spite of so much that was oppressive, the Christians recognised in it the centre of law and order. The sequel confirms the reasonableness of this view. The civil authorities commanded the patriarch to institute a trial; but he refused, for the authorities of the Church as represented by the episcopate were on his side. Michael of Damietta took the lead in supporting the novel custom, writing a short treatise on it which is still in existence. The next stage was an appeal to Michael i., the Jacobite patriarch of Antioch, who wavered in his treatment of the question. At first he inclined to the view of the bishops, and was induced to regard Mark as a heretic; but on learning more about the case he swung round to the opposite view, and supported the practice of confession to the priest. Both this patriarch and the learned writer Bar Salibi wrote on the necessity of that practice. Mark, however, found little comfort in his own Church, since the bishops were still opposed to him. He joined the Greek Church, returned to the Coptic, went over to the Greek communion again, and yet again sought to be readmitted to his own old Church. It is not surprising that the Coptic patriarch refused to have any more to do with him.
It is curious to find Neale championing Mark as "the English Chillingworth." The outstanding feature of the whole story is the fact that the bishops were supporting the novel practice, which, however materialistic and superstitious we may hold it to be, was nevertheless partially Protestant in its opposition to sacerdotalism, while on this occasion the protestor stood for the rights and powers of the priests. Such a situation is unique in history. It is tantalising to know too little of the motives of the chief actors in it for adequate judgment of its true inwardness. When bishops champion the rights of the laity against the priestly claims of presbyters, the inference is that since some of them are men of culture and reading, while the lower clergy are steeped in ignorance, the reason is disciplinary rather than doctrinal. The ignorant priests were not fit to be trusted with the machinery of the confessional. Some of them were men of no character. Discerning bishops might well discourage confession to such men, because they saw that it was safer for simple souls to confess to the smoking censer, which, if it could not give ghostly advice, was at least free from any corrupting influence.
In the earlier part of his reign Saladin removed the Christians from public offices and laid upon them many vexatious restrictions, such as the prohibition of bell-ringing, crosses on churches, procession on Palm Sundays, chanting of services in a loud voice. He directed the churches to be painted black. Nevertheless, he was a large-minded, strong ruler, who secured good order in his dominions. If the Christians were shut out of office they were also spared the fines that his mean predecessors had too often attached to public functions, so that it really seemed that the posts were allotted for the sake of the backshish. In his later days Saladin readmitted Christians to the government service. It is not surprising that under these circumstances there were some Christians who apostasised to Mohammedanism, favour drawing them where persecution had failed to drive. But when a certain monk who had joined Islam returned to his monastery, a soldier was sent with orders to put him to death unless he came back to the religion of the Prophet. This was quite in accordance with Mussulman law. A Christian might remain a Christian, but when once he had become a Mohammedan he came under the stern rule of Islam, which exacts the death penalty on all who forsake the creed of the Prophet. The miserable waverer not only yielded to the threat of death, but he even lodged with the government information of treasure which he said the monastery that had given him an asylum contained. Very little was found there, and that little was returned when the whole story was known.
The later Crusades had hardly any more effect on the Church in Egypt than had been the case with the earlier expeditions from Europe for the recovery of the Holy Land. The siege of Damietta (a.d. 1218) and the ill-fated expedition of St. Louis (a.d. 1248–1250) were wholly affairs of the Latin Church with which the Copts had no concern. Had these wars been successful in the end, they would have been free from the yoke of Islam only to face the demand of submission to Rome. Meanwhile the Saracen rule of Egypt was more just and enlightened than any form of government that the Copts had ever known before. There was therefore little temptation for them to give much material aid to the Crusaders. Unhappily their own internal history at this time does not furnish us with an edifying record. Quarrels on the election of patriarchs, and charges of simony against patriarchs when in power, are the chief items that break the monotony of the narrative. The Sultan Kamel refused an offer of heavy bribes to favour the election of a candidate for the patriarchate. He was so pleased with a visit he paid to the monastery of St. Macarius that he richly endowed it and granted its monks several privileges. On the other hand, the patriarch Cyril, who was appointed during his reign and very affably received by the sultan, turned out to be a cause of great trouble in the Church. He was guilty of outrageous simony—the typical offence of the Eygptian patriarchs of which we hear again and again in successive ages. There had been a gap in the patriarchate which had resulted in many vacancies in the bishoprics. Cyril ordained forty bishops, and accumulated a very considerable sum of money by means of the large fees he exacted from them. At length he was arrested on charges of malversation of funds and sent to Cairo. The bishops now proposed terms to him. He should give up the practice of simony, and have his authority limited in several directions; but he was liberated by favour of the sultan without agreeing to these terms. Subsequently, since fresh complaints were brought forward, fourteen bishops of Lower Egypt met at Cairo and induced him to consent to a number of reforms, among which was the requirement that the consecration of bishops and priests should be performed free of charge. But the quarrel went on. Cyril was repeatedly accused to the sultan and repeatedly fined. Yet so great was the influence of his office that he was able to raise all the funds requisite to satisfy the government. He held the control of the mighty engine of ordination. If he refused to ordain bishops the episcopate would die out, and with it the priesthood, and with that the Church itself. The sacerdotal system derived all its authority primarily from the patriarch. When religion depends on the sacraments, the sacraments on the priests, the priests on the bishops, and the bishops on the patriarch—without whose concurrence their ordination is uncanonical, this supreme prelate holds the key of the situation. He can exact his own terms before consenting to ordain. Thus he can obtain sufficient money to bribe the civil authority when that authority, the only power above him, is invoked to interfere with his tyrannical practices. In this way Cyril was able to continue his disgraceful practices till his death relieved the Copts of the incubus of his patriarchal rule (a.d. 1243).
The subsequent story of the Coptic Church becomes less and less interesting, except at one or two points, where its monotony is broken by the emergence of a striking personality or by the occurrence of events in the outer world. The original sources for the history are here very meagre, so that we have not materials from which to come to an adequate knowledge of the succession of events. But what is preserved is enough to show that we do not lose much for lack of fuller information. We are now approaching the age of the Mamelukes. These were at first barbarous slaves who pushed to the front and seized the power of government. Their rule began in the year 1260, and it came as an improvement on the government of the degenerate sultans and caliphs. They elevated two successive nominal caliphs of the Abbasidæ line, who were mere shadows. After the year 1382 a Circassian dynasty of Mamelukes ruled, without that pretence of respect for antiquarianism. The Mamelukes have been described as "jealous, cruel, suspicious, avaricious."[1] But they lightened taxes and executed some public works. These rulers of an alien race held themselves aloof both from the Arabs and from the Copts. They remained in power till the year 1517. It was really an oligarchical government with nominal boy sultans, carried on in the midst of plots and assassinations. Meanwhile great events were being transacted in Eastern Europe, But the establishment of the Ottoman rule and the fall of Constantinople had no appreciable effect on the fortunes of the Copts. They had been long under the yoke of Islam, and the change of masters from one dynasty to another, and even from race to race, made little difference to their subject condition. Just and merciful governors left them at peace with their guaranteed rights; vicious and iniquitous rulers preyed upon them and persecuted them. The variations of treatment depended more on the personnel of the authorities than on the name and source of the government.
Within the Church itself the movement of the times brought two successive influences from without to bear on it. These were the Uniat propaganda associated with the council of Florence and the Protestant ideas that Cyril Lucar introduced after his travels in the West.
The Coptic Church had but little active concern with the efforts of men in the East to come to terms with the Western Church. The origin and motives of these efforts were not religious or even ecclesiastical; they were purely political. John Palæologus and other emperors saw the desperate need of a European alliance if the onward march of the Turks was to be stayed and the last remnants of the Byzantine Empire preserved. What interest had that policy for the Copts, already subject to Islam and not of the Greek communion? Nevertheless the Coptic patriarch, John xi., sent John the abbot of St. Antony as a delegate to Florence. He did not arrive till after the Greeks had left. This will account for the fact that the council decreed union with the Coptic Church. But it had previously effected a nominal union with the Greek Church. And yet these two Churches mutually anathematised one another. The consequences would have been interesting if there had been any reality in the acts of union. But since, in point of fact, they were never accepted by either of the Eastern Churches, they can only be regarded as pious pronouncements in the region of idea. Metrophanes, the metropolitan of Cyzicum, whom the emperor made patriarch of Constantinople on account of his staunch support of the union of the Greeks and Latins, was denounced by the three other Greek patriarchs as a "matricide"—for killing his "mother Church." The union with the Jacobites was no more real, and the Copts still remained in separation from the Latin as well as from the Greek Churches.
The story of Cyril Lucar belongs to the Greek Church, and therefore it has been given earlier in this volume.[2] We are accustomed to think of him as the patriarch of Alexandria before he was translated to the patriarchate of Constantinople. But he was the Melchite patriarch, the representative of the alien Greek communion with its few adherents in Alexandria and its neighbourhood. Still it is a fact of significance in regard to Christianity in Egypt, that although not a member of the national Church, Cyril introduced the new learning into that country. He appeared as a vigorous opponent of Rome, and many who had no notion of what Protestantism was saying and doing in the West were ready to welcome a man who shared the general aversion to union with the papacy that was felt by the Greek Church in Egypt. There can be no doubt, however, that he was strongly imbued with Protestantism. A modern Roman Catholic historian says of him, "He was a Protestant who formed a party of Calvinists in his Church, and his opinions were afterwards condemned by four councils."[3] Cyril influenced a group of men in Alexandria of his own Church in the direction of Protestantism. But the time was peculiarly unpropitious for the spread of similar influences among the Copts, because they were still in a measure compromised by the nominal union with Rome that had been pronounced at Florence.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century the national Church in Egypt was in a feeble condition, at the very ebb of its fortunes; and the Melchite Church was even lower, being reduced to little else than a nominal patriarchate. Then came Peter vii., a good man who was anxious to improve matters. In the year 1833, Curzon visited Egypt in search of manuscripts that he hoped to find among the monasteries. He was followed by Archdeacon Tattam, who roused some interest in England by his accounts of the ignorant and depressed condition of the Coptic Christians, the first consequence of which was an issue of an Arabic version of the four Gospels by the British and Foreign Bible Society. In the year 1840 the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge produced an Arabic translation of old Egyptian commentaries. About the same time Grimshaw, an English clergyman, went to Egypt and helped to start a school that was conducted by a Mr. Lieder for the training of priests. This school met with little encouragement. Peter died in the year 1854, and was succeeded by Cyril, at first an active reformer of the Coptic Church. This enlightened patriarch established schools for girls as well as for boys, rebuilt the cathedral, destroyed pictures as idols, gathered a new council to help him, and established a college at Cairo in charge of Philotheus, an able, learned man. Unfortunately the patriarch would not give the principal a free hand, and, being dissatisfied with his teaching, broke the college up.
In the year 1890 a society of young laymen was constituted for reforming the Coptic Church, and it issued pamphlets in Arabic. Then Cyril got up a rival society called "the Orthodox." A public meeting was called to meet Cyril, which so alarmed the patriarch that he put himself under the protection of the police. His next step was to call a synod, at which he gave the bishops a statement requiring them to sign it and read it in their churches. He would reform the Church; but this must be in his own way. Of course there was great dissatisfaction at such high-handed proceedings, and the Khedive Tewfic intervened. But Cyril would not listen to persuasion. A new council was elected, in which Athanasius of Sanabu, a bishop of the young reform party, was a member. Cyril excommunicated him. Such conduct was unbearable, and the reformers got Cyril banished to Nitria. Meanwhile every effort was made to induce him to withdraw the excommunication of Athanasius, but in vain. At last Athanasius and his supporters simply ignored it. Then came a reaction from the older people; Cyril was recalled, and his return was a triumph, although he had proved himself an obstinate, tyrannical prelate. Still there was progress in spite of these difficulties. The stagnation of the Coptic Church has been largely due to the ignorance of the priests. There is now some progress towards an education of candidates for the ministry, and therefore hope of better times to come. The Copts look to England for sympathy, and rejoice in the English rule of Egypt. They know that if England had not stepped in to suppress the rebellion of Arabi Pasha they would have been massacred wholesale.
- ↑ Sir W. Muir, The Mamelukes, etc., p. 66.
- ↑ See pp. 309 ff.
- ↑ Fortescue, The Orthodox Eastern Church, p. 264.