Pope Damian the First (of Egypt)

Phil Booth has an excellent piece teasing out how Egypt got her own Pope, a Miaphysite Pope. It wasn't inevitable!

This updates a Jean Maspero project; Gaston Maspero being both hero and villain of nineteenth-century hypotheses. Jean for his part was a pleine hero; he would die in the trenches 1915. Allowing for the sources young Jean had, which weren't much, he was impressive as a scholar as well. Booth is here to bring in findings and translations since the War.

After the vaunted Founding Of The Miaphysite Church as against Chalcedon, it turns out (now) that Egypt's Miaphysites... collapsed. (Sometimes, pace, Maspero, absence of evidence can imply evidence of absence.) Empress Theodora was a Miaphysite herself but she was also a Byzantine political loyalist, and her husband was Emperor Justinian I. That court was keen there be a second. They needed unity for that, and ... this was Byzantium. Where couldn't be theological unity there must at least be hierarchical unity.

The Miaphysite dissidents in Egypt were no match for Justinian, so the hierarchy there acclaimed Chalcedon. The dissidents went off to monasteries and to churches in the butt-end of nowhere (and there's a lot of nowhere in Sahara). I'll observe, for this reign: BLA syr 17202 didn't talk Egypt. Under Justin II, some Nile dissidents attempted to organise a new church but they failed.

Alas for Chalcedon in Egypt, Justin went loopy and starting AD 574ish, the Tiberius II - Maurice junta took over. (I forget which, but that régime saw off the challenge of that "Justinian II" claimant.) These two weren't keen to suppress whatever the Miaphysites were up to in Egypt, as long as the grain kept flowing.

This deliberate neglect from the Greeks and, perhaps, better leadership among the Miaphysites allowed the latter to (re)organise under the Greeks' noses. The Coptic (I presume, Sahidic) language sparked up, up the Nile; thus, this church became the National Church of Keme.

Peter IV and then Damian, the leaders of this faction, appointed eighty(!) bishops. Booth points out that this isn't an exaggeration since we have documentation for most of these, including many names. This many bishops implies a parallel hierarchy on account (per Booth) Justinian and Justin were hardly about to leave the bulk of Egypt bereft of oversight. Parallel, in theology, means rival.

John of Ephesus, from the Syriac side, thought Damian was going overboard. Jacob Bar Addai had not gone this far among the Syrians. But one cannot argue with results.

BACKDATE 7/14