Coptica v. 16 2017

Fakhr al-Dawlah ibn al-Muʾtaman

79

who early in the ninth century converted to Islam and fought against the Byzantines as a Muslim ghāzī , but then suddenly, upon hearing words from the Gospels, began to weep and repent of his way of life. 30 A kindly priest at Baʿlabakk received the penitent warrior with joy, performed a rite for the reception of apostates called, in Greek, the hilasmos ( uṣmūn in the Arabic text), 31 after which he celebrated the liturgy and communed the prodigal. Qays went on to become a monk of Mt. Sinai with the name ʿAbd al-Masīḥ, and eventually became first oikonomos and later superior of the monastery. Finally, after he had been recognized by one of his former raiding companions, he became a martyr at al-Ramlah, the Umayyad provincial capital of Palestine. The situation appears to have been similar among the Copts. The Coptic equivalent of the Greek hilasmos for the reception of apostates was the liturgy known as the Rite of the Jar ( fuṣūl or ṣalāt al-qidr )—for which there is manuscript evidence going back to the days of our great 14 th -century saints. 32 According to Leslie MacCoull’s translation of the Coptic text, this rite is “[a] canon that the teachers of the Church handed down concerning one who has denied the faith, or who has defiled his flesh with an unbeliever, whether male or female.” 33 What is interesting about the story of Fakhr al- Dawlah is that there is no indication in our texts that any such liturgical rite was performed. Perhaps the rite was not widely known and used; it may have had its home in churches in urban centers like Cairo and Alexandria. Or, perhaps it is simply a mark of the holiness of saints such as Marqus al-Anṭūnī or Anbā Ruways, and the heavenly connections that they enjoyed, that they were not constrained by the usual liturgical practices. Marqus received the penitent apostate, we recall, with a simple and stunning declaration of absolution: “Your sins are forgiven you.” (In the Rite of the Jar, the priest prays for forgiveness, but does not pronounce absolution.) 34 Marqus then— and this appears to have been typical of his practice at the Monastery of St. Antony—brought the penitent to the monastery’s principle church, and 30 This story has received a fair amount of attention since the edition and English translation of Sidney H. Griffith, “The Arabic Account of ‘Abd al-Masiḥ an-Nağrānī al-Ghassānī,” Le Muséon 98 (1985): 331-74; for a new English translation and bibliography see John Lamoreaux, “Hagiography,” in The Orthodox Church in the Arab World, 700-1700: An Anthology of Sources , ed. Samuel Noble and Alexander Treiger (DeKalb, IL: University of Northern Illinois Press, 2014), 112-135 (here pp. 113-15, 123-28). 31 On this rite (and the correct interpretation of the word uṣmūn in the martyrdom account), see Heinzgerd Brakmann, Tinatin Chronz, and Ugo Zanetti, “Der palästinische Rekonziliationsritus für Apostaten: al-uṣmūn = ἱλασός,” Oriens Christianus 93 (2009): 109-12. 32 L.S.B. MacCoull, “The Rite of the Jar: Apostasy and Reconciliation in the Medieval Coptic Orthodox Church,” in Peace and Negotiation: Strategies for Coexistence in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 145-62. On the manuscript evidence, see p. 146: MS Cairo, Coptic Museum, Lit. 331 (Graf 696, Simaika 144), is dated to 1374. 33 Ibid., p. 147. 34 Ibid., pp. 147-50 (English translation of the rite).