praying4patience
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Registered: 03-2006
Posts: 2025
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Re: Particular Churches of Christendom(chart)
Actually, the separation of the Coptic Orthodox from Rome is much older than the separation of the Byzantine Orthodox.
www.cnewa.org/ecc-coptic-orthodox.htm
"The foundation of the church in Egypt is closely associated with St. Mark the Evangelist who, according to tradition, was martyred in Alexandria in 63 AD. Eventually Egypt became a Christian nation and Alexandria an extremely important center of theological reflection. Moreover, monks in the Egyptian desert provided the first models for the Christian monastic tradition, having been nourished by the spiritual insights of the early “desert fathers.”
But the christological teachings of the Council of Chalcedon in 451, partially because of opposition to Byzantine domination, were rejected by much of the Egyptian hierarchy and faithful. Persecutions intended to force acceptance only reinforced the resistance. Eventually a separate “Coptic” (from the Arabic and Greek word for “Egyptian”) Church emerged with a distinct theological and liturgical tradition. From the 5th to the 9th centuries the Greek Patriarchs lived in the city of Alexandria, while the Coptic Patriarchs resided in the desert monastery of St. Macarius.
After the Arab invasion in 641, the Copts slowly diminished in numbers, becoming a minority in Egypt around the year 850. Arabic replaced Coptic as the official language of the country in the 8th century. Islamic rule was marked by long periods of persecution, but also by periods of relative freedom, during which the church flourished again and produced outstanding theological and spiritual works in Arabic"
Many years,
Neil
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4/8/2006, 10:30 am
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