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Updated: June 25, 2025
Despite the terror inspired by the religious persecutions which Heraclius had carried on with so much energy, one man, the Koptic patriarch Benjamin, had bravely kept his faith intact. He belonged to the Jacobite sect and abandoned none of its dogmas, and in their intolerance the all-powerful Melchites did not hesitate to choose him as their chief victim.
As these Latin monks did not understand either Koptic or Greek, they found some difficulty in regulating their lives with the wished-for exactness; and the rules of Pachomius, of Theodorus, and of Oresiesis, the most celebrated of the founders, were actually sent to Jerome at Rome, to be by him translated into Latin for the use of these settlers in the Thebaid. These Latin monks made St.
The Koptic clergy give him no other claim to historical remembrance than the formulating of a decree ordaining "that the patriarch can only be inaugurated on a Sunday." Isaac was succeeded by Simon the Syrian, whom the Koptic church looks upon as a saint, and for whom is claimed the power of reviving the dead.
It was most likely a translation from one of the four gospels, though it had some different readings suited to its own church, and contained some praise of celibacy not found in the New Testament; but it was not valued by the Greeks, and was lost on the spread of the Koptic translation of the whole New Testament.
Had the emperors been at all times either humane or politic enough to employ bishops of the same religion as the people, they would perhaps have kept the good-will of their subjects; but as it was, the Koptic church, smarting under its insults, and forgetting the greater evils of a foreign conquest, would sometimes look with longing eyes to the condition of their neighbours, their brethren in faith, the Arabic subjects of Persia.
The Koptic clerical historians, according to their usual habit, portray this governor as still worse than his predecessors, but in this case the Mussulman authorities are in agreement in accusing him of the most iniquitous extortions and most barbarous massacres. He forced the wearing of this ring continually, and the hand found without this strange form of receipt was to be cut off.
To these were afterwards added the Acts of the council of Nicæa, the lives of the saints and martyrs, the writings of many of the Christian fathers, the rituals of the Koptic church, and various treatises on religion.
The teaching of the Koptic language in the schools is now compulsory; the subjects taught, and the methods of teaching them, are the same as in vogue in other countries. Fifty per cent, of the Koptic male population can read and write well. The indigenous tribunals of the country are called Mehkemmehs, and are presided over by cadis.
It is remarkable that the translation of a gospel into Koptic introduced a Greek alphabet into the Koptic language.
Though the chief part of the population spoke Koptic, it was still a Greek province of the Roman empire; the decrees of the prefects of Alexandria and of the upper provinces were written in Greek; and every Roman traveller, who, like a schoolboy, has scratched his name upon the foot of the musical statue of Amenhôthes, to let the world know the extent of his travels, has helped to prove that the Roman government of the country was carried on in the Greek language.
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