Bishops-Monks in the Monasteries: Presence and Role

The fourth and the fifth centuries marked the rise to prominence of monastic communities in Egypt, communities that offered a powerful !and sometimes quite volatile" base of grassroots support for Alexandrian episcopal authority. In the midst of the doctrinal controversy at home and abroad, Alexandrian patriarchs like Alexander, Athanasius, Theophilus, and Cyril consistently portrayed themselves as privileged monastic patrons and offered material forms of benefaction to monasteries in an effort to win the allegiance of Egyptian monks away from theological rivals; lastly, during the final two centuries of Byzantine rule in Egypt, an ethos of theological existence gripped the Coptic Church. Often politi% cally disenfranchised and geographically displaced, the Egyptian popes in this period produced a complex rhetoric of resistance that was crafted as a response to colonial models of ecclesiastical control and often deployed as a standard for adjudicating internal disputes. And yet, even though these strategies of representation were each forged in the midst of specific conflicts, it was their adaptability to different times and to different social settings that allowed them to exert such a profound influence over the ways that ancient Copts perceived themselves and their leadership