The Coptic church
Christianity takes root early in Egypt, which gives the world monasticism and, after 451, its own independent Coptic Orthodox Church.
- Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Christians versus Muslims in Modern Egypt: The Century-Long Struggle for Coptic Equality — S. S. Hasan, Oxford University Press (2003)
- The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt — Toby Wilkinson, Bloomsbury (2010)
Coptic tradition holds that Saint Mark the Evangelist brought Christianity to Alexandria in the first century and founded its church; the Coptic pope is still called Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of Saint Mark. Alexandria became one of the great centres of early Christian thought, and Egypt’s deserts gave the world monasticism: Saint Antony withdrew into the desert in the late third century, and monasteries such as those of Wadi Natrun have been inhabited ever since.
- Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Egyptian Christians suffered heavily under Roman persecution, especially under Diocletian; the Coptic calendar counts its years from 284 CE, the “Era of the Martyrs”. In 451 the Council of Chalcedon defined Christ as having two natures, divine and human. Most Egyptian Christians rejected that formula, and their church became independent of both Rome and Constantinople.
- Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Christians versus Muslims in Modern Egypt: The Century-Long Struggle for Coptic Equality — S. S. Hasan, Oxford University Press (2003)
The church’s identity was shaped by that independence and by long experience as a minority: a strong monastic tradition, a calendar of long fasts, devotion to martyrs and saints, and pilgrimages (moulids) that Muslims sometimes join too. Many Copts wear a small cross tattooed on the inner wrist. In the twentieth century a lay “Sunday school” movement revived the church, and the long papacy of Shenouda III (1971–2012) made the pope a powerful public figure who spoke for the community.
- Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Christians versus Muslims in Modern Egypt: The Century-Long Struggle for Coptic Equality — S. S. Hasan, Oxford University Press (2003)
Why it matters today
The Coptic Orthodox Church is the largest Christian community in the Middle East and one of the oldest anywhere. For Copts it is the core of identity, and for many Muslim Egyptians too the church and its monasteries are part of the nation's heritage. The word "Copt" itself comes from the Greek for "Egyptian".