The Copts and the West, 1439-1822 The European Discovery of the Egyptian Church

by Hamilton, Alastair

• ISBN13: 9780199288779
• ISBN10: 0199288771
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-09-28
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

In seventeenth-century Europe the Copts, or the Egyptian members of the Church of Alexandria, were widely believed to hold the key to an ancient wisdom and an ancient theology. Their language was thought to lead to the deciphering of the hieroglyphs and their Church to retain traces of earlyChristian practices as well as early Egyptian customs. This book, the first full-length study of the subject, discusses the attempts of Catholic missionaries to force the Church of Alexandria into union with the Church of Rome and the slow accumulation of knowledge of Coptic beliefs, undertaken byCatholics and Protestants. It ends with a survey of the study of the Coptic language in the West and of the uses to which it was put by Biblical scholars, antiquarians, theologians and Egyptologists.

Author Biography

Educated at Eton and King's College Cambridge. Taught at the University of Urbino from 1977 to 1992, Professor of the History of the Radical Reformation at the University of Amsterdam from1987 to 2001, and Dr. C. Louise Thijssen-Schoute Professor of the History of Ideas at Leiden University from 1985 to 2005. Now Arcadian Visiting Research Professor at the School of Advanced Study, London University, attached to the Warburg Institute and General Editor of the Arcadian Series (London/Oxford). Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations	x
List of Maps	xiii
Introduction	1	(8)
PART I. THE COPTS IN EGYPT
1. An Ancient Church	9	(14)
2. Muslim Domination	23	(26)
PART II. THE MISSIONS
3. The Council of Florence	49	(9)
4. The First Jesuit Mission	58	(16)
5. New Approaches	74	(9)
6. Towards a Coptic Catholic Church	83	(24)
PART III. KNOWLEDGE OF THE COPTS
7. The First Steps	107	(14)
8. Confessional Clashes I	121	(18)
9. Confessional Clashes II	139	(13)
10. Jansenists and Jesuits	152	(16)
11. Protestants and the Enlightenment	168	(27)
PART IV. THE COPTIC LANGUAGE
12. Athanasius Kircher and his Shadow	195	(34)
13. Grammars, Dictionaries, and Dialects	229	(21)
14. Manuscript Collecting	250	(9)
15. Biblical Studies	259	(15)
Epilogue	274	(11)
Bibliography	285	(30)
General Index	315