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54-615: The Enaton was composed of distinct monasteries and cells which elected a common hegumen (leader). Theologically, the Enaton was Miaphysite . In its heyday, the district was international in character, comprising both Copts and Syriacs . It was a waystation (Roman mutatio ) for travellers from Alexandria to the monasteries of the Nitrian Desert and the monastery of Saint Mina . It probably served as an inn or hostel for pilgrims, tourists, merchants and their animals. In Arabic ,

108-411: A Jacobite orientation. In 1066, the hegumen John ibn Tirus was considered for the patriarchate. The monastery may have suffered from Bedouin raids during the patriarchates of Shenouda II (1032–1046) and Christodoulos (1047–1077). The monastery had only about forty monks in residence during this period, a sharp decline from its heyday. The Miracles of Abba Mina , possibly written as early as 1363,

162-424: A pejorative reference to biographies and histories whose authors are perceived to be uncritical or excessively reverential toward their subject. Hagiography constituted an important literary genre in the early Christian church , providing some informational history along with the more inspirational stories and legends . A hagiographic account of an individual saint could consist of a biography ( vita ),

216-409: A Hegumen tends to be of wood (usually ebony), rather than metal. The hegumen is awarded the gold pectoral cross by the bishop, as for an archpriest . During divine services, the hegumen wears a simple black monastic mantle , while the higher ranking archimandrite wears a mantle similar to one worn by a bishop (though without the white "rivers" along the sides, and decorated with unadorned "tablets" at

270-627: A completely reliable source. The Coptic Martyrdom of Apa Kradjon also links the Enaton to Theonas. It says that during the persecution the patriarch ordained a certain Theopemptos as the bishop of the Monastery of the Fathers outside Alexandria. This monastery purportedly already had six hundred monks at that time. The Martyrdom , however, is largely legendary. John of Ephesus , in his Lives of Peter and Photius (written c. 565), takes

324-556: A description of the saint's deeds or miracles, an account of the saint's martyrdom ( passio ), or be a combination of these. The genre of lives of the saints first came into being in the Roman Empire as legends about Christian martyrs were recorded. The dates of their deaths formed the basis of martyrologies . In the 4th century, there were three main types of catalogs of lives of the saints: The earliest lives of saints focused on desert fathers who lived as ascetics from

378-560: A largely illiterate audience. Hagiography provided priests and theologians with classical handbooks in a form that allowed them the rhetorical tools necessary to present their faith through the example of the saints' lives. Of all the English hagiographers no one was more prolific nor so aware of the importance of the genre as Abbot Ælfric of Eynsham . His work Lives of the Saints contains set of sermons on saints' days, formerly observed by

432-588: A schism that had separate their two Miaphysite churches since the late 580s. Neither could meet in Alexandria, since it was controlled by the Chalcedonians. Their reconciliation was made possibly by philological studies conducted at the Antonine monastery in the Enaton. Between 615 and 617, while they were resident in the Enaton, Tumo of Ḥarqel and Paul of Tella produced major translations into Syriac,

486-816: A sermon on Longinus' virtues, the monastery founded by Abba Gaius from Corinth had originally been outside the Enaton. After it was joined to the Enaton community, Gaius was elected hegumenos . Under Longinus, the monks of the Enaton strongly opposed the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon (451). Explicitly Miaphysite theology arrived at the Enaton in 453 with Peter the Iberian and his followers, who were exiled from Maiuma in Palestine. Other Miaphysite and anti-Chalcedonian exiles from Palestine and Syria followed: Julian of Halicarnassus , Severus of Antioch (518), Tumo of Ḥarqel (599) and Paul of Tella (599). Severus

540-432: Is a biography of a saint or an ecclesiastical leader, as well as, by extension, an adulatory and idealized biography of a preacher, priest, founder, saint, monk, nun or icon in any of the world's religions. Early Christian hagiographies might consist of a biography or vita (from Latin vita , life, which begins the title of most medieval biographies), a description of the saint's deeds or miracles, an account of

594-443: Is described in the sources as both a laura (that is, a collection of individual cells or hermitages , often in caves ) and a monasterion . It was composed of numerous autonomous foundations that varied in size from a lone hermit in a cell to large communities of monks. Each foundation was itself considered a monasterion , the most common type being the koinobion (community of monks). Each koinobion had its own church and

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648-618: Is not used in the capacity of an Abbot, although the monasteries' abbots used to be Hegumen until the beginning of the 20th century, but by the mid century, the Church of Alexandria started to appoint Bishops in the capacity of Abbots . On the other hand, the rank of archimandrite fell into disuse in the Church of Alexandria from the late 16th century. Hagiographic A hagiography ( / ˌ h æ ɡ i ˈ ɒ ɡ r ə f i / ; from Ancient Greek ἅγιος , hagios  'holy' and -γραφία , -graphia  'writing')

702-580: Is several miles further west on the hill of Kom al-Zujaj. As a result of its proximity to Alexandria, the Enaton provided a much easier life than the monasteries of the desert. When Hilaria , daughter of the Emperor Zeno ( r.  474–491 ), tried to enter the monastery of Scetis , Abbot Pembo recommended that she join the Enaton instead because "it is moderate; there is at this time a group of wealthy people who have made themselves monks; they live without fatigue; they find consolation." The Enaton

756-618: Is the title for the head of a monastery in the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches , or an archpriest in the Coptic Orthodox Church , similar to the title of abbot . The head of a convent of nuns is called a hegumenia or igumeni ( Greek : ἡγουμένη ). The term means "the one who is in charge", "the leader" in Greek. Initially, the title was applied to the head of any monastery. After 1874, when

810-604: The Cornish-language works Beunans Meriasek and Beunans Ke , about the lives of Saints Meriasek and Kea , respectively. Other examples of hagiographies from England include: Ireland is notable in its rich hagiographical tradition, and for the large amount of material which was produced during the Middle Ages. Irish hagiographers wrote primarily in Latin while some of the later saint's lives were written in

864-567: The Ge'ez language are known as gadl (Saint's Life). There are some 200 hagiographies about indigenous saints. They are among the most important Medieval Ethiopian written sources, and some have accurate historical information. They are written by the disciples of the saints. Some were written a long time after the death of a saint, but others were written not long after the saint's demise. Fragments from an Old Nubian hagiography of Saint Michael are extant. Jewish hagiographic writings are common in

918-526: The Martyrology of Tallaght and the Félire Óengusso . Such hagiographical calendars were important in establishing lists of native Irish saints, in imitation of continental calendars. In the 10th century, a Byzantine monk Simeon Metaphrastes was the first one to change the genre of lives of the saints into something different, giving it a moralizing and panegyrical character. His catalog of lives of

972-833: The Ḥarqlean version of the New Testament and the Syro-Hexaplar version of the Old Testament, respectively. The Enaton was sacked during the Persian conquest of Egypt in 619, but survived the Arab conquest of Egypt in 641. The Persian sack suggests that the Enaton was by that time quite wealthy. Although the Enaton occasionally benefited from Muslim rule in Egypt, it never regained its former glory. It seems to have maintained its federal constitution for some time, but by

1026-411: The 11th century it had become a single monastery. It maintained its international character and reputation for scholarship longer. It remained an active monastic centre until the 14th or 16th century. Its later history, however, is obscure. In 689, the hegumen John was considered for the patriarchate. The one actually elected, Simeon I , had been an oblate serving at the tomb of Severus. He was buried in

1080-491: The 14th through 17th centuries, but it may have bee merely a placename by then. The decline of the monastery probably owes something to the disruption of the coastal traffic during the Crusades and the desertification of Lake Mareotis. Dates are floruits. Italics indicate uncertainty of location. Dates are floruits. Hegumen Hegumen , hegumenos , or igumen ( Greek : ἡγούμενος , trans . hēgoúmenos ),

1134-437: The 16th. Production remained dynamic and kept pace with scholarly developments in historical biographical writing until 1925, when Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (d. 1938) placed an interdiction on Ṣūfī brotherhoods. As Turkey relaxed legal restrictions on Islamic practice in the 1950s and the 1980s, Ṣūfīs returned to publishing hagiography, a trend which continues in the 21st century. The pseudobiography of L. Ron Hubbard compiled by

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1188-518: The 4th century onwards. The life of Anthony of Egypt is usually considered the first example of this new genre of Christian biography. In Western Europe , hagiography was one of the more important vehicles for the study of inspirational history during the Middle Ages . The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine compiled a great deal of medieval hagiographic material, with a strong emphasis on miracle tales. Lives were often written to promote

1242-648: The Desert Fathers , is said to have come to the Enaton in 308. He was still alive in 364. The Arabic Passion of Sarapamon , an account of the martyrdom of Bishop Sarapamon of Nikiu , records that the protagonist travelled from Palestine to be baptised by Patriarch Theonas of Alexandria ( r.  282–300 ) and decided to become a monk in the Dayr al-Zujaj. Sarapamon was a victim of the Diocletianic persecution. His Passion , however, cannot be considered

1296-593: The Enaton became known as the Dayr al-Zujaj (Monastery of Glass) or Dayr al-Zajjaj (Monastery of the Glass Maker), terms that derive from Coptic ⲡⲓⲙⲟⲛⲁⲥⲧⲏⲣⲓⲟⲛ ⲛ̀ⲧⲉ ⲛⲓⲥⲁⲛⲁⲃⲁϫⲏⲓⲛⲓ, Pimonastirion ente nisanabajaini . A more faithful Coptic rendering of the Greek, El-Ainatoun , was also used. In Arabic, it is also sometimes called al-Hanatun (from Enaton), Bihanatun (from Graeco-Coptic ⲡⲓϩⲉⲛⲁⲧⲟⲛ, Pi-Hennaton ) and Tunbatarun (from Greek Ton Pateron , "[monastery] of

1350-684: The Enaton. According to her Syriac biography, Anastasia the Patrician founded a monastery there. The Greek version of her life, however, places her foundation in the Pempton. Likewise, Caesaria the Patrician founded a monastery that may have been in the Enaton. In the 480s, some monks of the Enaton collaborated with the Chalcedonian monastery of the Metanoia east of Alexandria against a (by then illegal) shrine of Isis at Menouthis . There

1404-583: The Enaton. Prominent Chalcedonian visitors include John Moschus , who stayed in the monastery of John the Eunuch, and Patriarch Sophronius of Jerusalem , who dedicated an anacreonticon to Theonas, the head ( oikonomos ) of the monastery of Tugara. In 616, the Enaton was the site of a meeting between the Coptic patriarch Anastasios Apozygarios and the Syriac patriarch of Antioch , Athanasios Gamolo , to heal

1458-683: The English Church. The text comprises two prefaces, one in Latin and one in Old English , and 39 lives beginning on 25 December with the nativity of Christ and ending with three texts to which no saints' days are attached. The text spans the entire year and describes the lives of many saints, both English and continental, and harks back to some of the earliest saints of the early church. There are two known instances where saint's lives were adapted into vernacular plays in Britain. These are

1512-520: The Fathers"). The Ethiopic translation of the Arabic version of John of Nikiu 's Chronicle calls the monastery Bantun , evidently a corruption of al-Hanatun. The exact location of the Enaton is not known, but it must have lain on the taenia (strip of land) between the Mediterranean Sea and Lake Mareotis . It probably had an anchorage on the seacoast and served as an access point to

1566-562: The Russian monasteries were reformed and classified into three classes, the title of hegumen was reserved only for the lowest, third class. The head of a monastery of the second or first class holds the rank of archimandrite . In the Greek Catholic Church , the head of all monasteries in a certain territory is called the protohegumen . The duties of both hegumen and archimandrite are the same, archimandrite being considered

1620-475: The Sikh Janamsakhis ) concerning saints, gurus and other individuals believed to be imbued with sacred power. Hagiographic works, especially those of the Middle Ages , can incorporate a record of institutional and local history , and evidence of popular cults , customs, and traditions . However, when referring to modern, non-ecclesiastical works, the term hagiography is often used today as

1674-518: The appearance of a large town with irregular streets, houses with terraced roofs, and dogs running about." The origins of the Enaton are obscure. There are hagiographic sources that push back the Enaton's history to the time of the Diocletianic persecution in late 3rd or early 4th century, but their reliability is questionable. The monk Theodore , whose words are preserved with the Sayings of

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1728-587: The beginning of the 7th century a common oikonomos (steward). According to the History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria , there were 600 monasteries in the Enaton around the year 600. This number more probably represents the total number of monasteries in the region of Alexandria, as indicated by the Copto-Arabic and Ethiopian Synaxaria . Still, "the many establishments at the Enaton must have given it

1782-793: The case of Talmudic and Kabbalistic writings and later in the Hasidic movement. Hagiography in Islam began in the Arabic language with biographical writing about the Prophet Muhammad in the 8th century CE, a tradition known as sīra . From about the 10th century CE, a genre generally known as manāqib also emerged, which comprised biographies of the imams ( madhāhib ) who founded different schools of Islamic thought ( madhhab ) about shariʿa , and of Ṣūfī saints . Over time, hagiography about Ṣūfīs and their miracles came to predominate in

1836-402: The church, a hegumen may use a wooden walking stick similar to that used by a bishop or archimandrite, only not adorned with a silver knob. In the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria , the rank is used in the capacity of an archpriest and actually is one. The name in the Arabic is kommos (قمص); this honorary title is granted to both married priests and hieromonks without distinction and

1890-532: The cult of local or national states, and in particular to develop pilgrimages to visit relics . The bronze Gniezno Doors of Gniezno Cathedral in Poland are the only Romanesque doors in Europe to feature the life of a saint. The life of Saint Adalbert of Prague , who is buried in the cathedral, is shown in 18 scenes, probably based on a lost illuminated copy of one of his Lives. The Bollandist Society continues

1944-522: The genre of manāqib . Likewise influenced by early Islamic research into hadiths and other biographical information about the Prophet, Persian scholars began writing Persian hagiography , again mainly of Sūfī saints, in the eleventh century CE. The Islamicisation of the Turkish regions led to the development of Turkish biographies of saints, beginning in the 13th century CE and gaining pace around

1998-512: The hagiographer's native vernacular Irish . Of particular note are the lives of St. Patrick , St. Columba (Latin)/Colum Cille (Irish) and St. Brigit/Brigid —Ireland's three patron saints. The earliest extant Life was written by Cogitosus . Additionally, several Irish calendars relating to the feastdays of Christian saints (sometimes called martyrologies or feastologies ) contained abbreviated synopses of saint's lives, which were compiled from many different sources. Notable examples include

2052-402: The hero-warrior figure, but with the distinction that the saint is of a spiritual sort. Imitation of the life of Christ was then the benchmark against which saints were measured, and imitation of the lives of saints was the benchmark against which the general population measured itself. In Anglo-Saxon and medieval England, hagiography became a literary genre par excellence for the teaching of

2106-418: The lake. The taenia was densely populated in late antiquity, with monasteries also at the fifth mile ( Pempton ), eighteenth ( Oktokaidekaton ) and twentieth ( Eikoston ). In the early 20th century, archaeologists identified funerary stelae and the ruins of a church near the village of Dikhaylah as coming from the Enaton. These are now thought to belong to the monastery of the Pempton. A more likely location

2160-581: The name "Monastery of the Fathers" to refer to the Enaton as a whole. A more reliable source for the early history of the Enaton is the Coptic Life of Longinus and Lucius , a biography of the 5th-century hegumens Longinus and Lucius . It is generally considered basically historical. It indicates that in the time of Longinus (450s) there were already monks buried in a cemetery at the Enaton. The site thus appears to have existed for some time before Longinus' election. According to Basil of Oxyrhynchus , in

2214-479: The neck and feet). An archimandrite also wears a mitre similar to one worn by a bishop; a hegumen does not (however, in the Russian tradition, a bishop may grant an hegumen the privilege of wearing the mitre as an ecclesiastical award). A hegumen may carry his pastoral staff in processions and when giving blessings in the church (though it is never carried into the sanctuary), although it usually stands upright next to his kathisma (monastic choir stall). When outside

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2268-431: The original life stories of their first saints, e.g. Boris and Gleb , Theodosius Pechersky etc. In the 16th century, Metropolitan Macarius expanded the list of the Russian saints and supervised the compiling process of their life stories. They would all be compiled in the so-called Velikiye chet'yi-minei catalog (Великие Четьи-Минеи, or Great Menaion Reader ), consisting of 12 volumes in accordance with each month of

2322-405: The popular heroic poem, such as Beowulf , one finds that they share certain common features. In Beowulf , the titular character battles against Grendel and his mother , while the saint, such as Athanasius ' Anthony (one of the original sources for the hagiographic motif) or the character of Guthlac , battles against figures no less substantial in a spiritual sense. Both genres then focus on

2376-784: The saint's martyrdom (called a passio ), or be a combination of these. Christian hagiographies focus on the lives, and notably the miracles , ascribed to men and women canonized by the Roman Catholic church , the Eastern Orthodox Church , the Oriental Orthodox churches , and the Church of the East . Other religious traditions such as Buddhism , Hinduism , Taoism , Islam , Sikhism and Jainism also create and maintain hagiographical texts (such as

2430-517: The saints became the standard for all of the Western and Eastern hagiographers, who would create relative biographies and images of the ideal saints by gradually departing from the real facts of their lives. Over the years, the genre of lives of the saints had absorbed a number of narrative plots and poetic images (often, of pre-Christian origin, such as dragon fighting etc.), mediaeval parables , short stories and anecdotes . The genre of lives of

2484-591: The saints was introduced in the Slavic world in the Bulgarian Empire in the late 9th and early 10th century, where the first original hagiographies were produced on Cyril and Methodius , Clement of Ohrid and Naum of Preslav . Eventually the Bulgarians brought this genre to Kievan Rus' together with writing and also in translations from the Greek language. In the 11th century, they began to compile

2538-539: The same church as Severus. The next patriarch, Alexander II , was also a monk from the Enaton. By the time of the Patriarch Mark II in the late 8th century, there was a tradition that a new patriarch should visit the Enaton. This tradition was abandoned by the 15th century. By the 11th century, the Enaton was a single monastery dedicated to Severus of Antioch. Owing to Severus and the Syriac influence, it had

2592-533: The senior dignity of the two. In the Russian Orthodox Church , the title of Hegumen may be granted as an honorary title to any hieromonk , even one who does not head a monastery. A ruling hegumen is formally installed in a ceremony by the bishop, during which he is presented with his pastoral staff (Greek: paterissa , Slavonic: палица, palitza ). Among the Russians, the pastoral staff for

2646-438: The study, academic assembly, appraisal and publication of materials relating to the lives of Christian saints (see Acta Sanctorum ). Many of the important hagiographical texts composed in medieval England were written in the vernacular dialect Anglo-Norman . With the introduction of Latin literature into England in the 7th and 8th centuries the genre of the life of the saint grew increasingly popular. When one contrasts it to

2700-511: The year. They were revised and expanded by St. Dimitry of Rostov in 1684–1705. The Life of Alexander Nevsky was a particularly notable hagiographic work of the era. Today, the works in the genre of lives of the saints represent a valuable historical source and reflection of different social ideas, world outlook and aesthetic concepts of the past. The Oriental Orthodox Churches also have their own hagiographic traditions. For instance, Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church hagiographies in

2754-700: Was a brief period when the Enaton appears to have adopted Chalcedonianism, since in 542/543 it received a treatise from the Emperor Justinian  I and in 551 Justinian appointed the monk Apollinarius of the monastery of Salama to the patriarchate of Alexandria. Nonetheless, the Enaton must have soon reverted to Miaphysitism. While the Chalcedonian (Melkite) patriarchs resided at Alexandria, the Miaphysite (Coptic) patriarchs could not. At least two— Peter IV (567–576) and Damian (576–605)—resided at

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2808-543: Was attributed in the 18th century to a certain Archimandrite Mardarius of Gabal al-Niaton, perhaps a corrupted reference to the Enaton. Al-Maqrizi wrote in the 15th century that the monastery of Dayr al-Zujaj was also known as al-Hanatun and was dedicated to Bu Gurg the Elder, Saint George . He is the last author to write of the monastery as still existing. The monastery appears on western European maps from

2862-411: Was buried in the Enaton. According to Zacharias Rhetor 's biography of Severus of Antioch, there was a holy man named Salama ( fl. 482–489) who lived in a monastery in the Enaton that eventually took his name. He had students named Stephanus and Athanasius, the former of which also established a monastery at the Enaton that took his name. Two other friends of Severus are possibly to be associated with

2916-405: Was under the rule of a superior with the title hegumen, cenobiarch or proestos and usually referred to as "father" ( apa or abba ). A community often took the name of a particularly revered superior, not necessarily its founder. The Enaton function according to a "federal constitution". The various monasteries elected a common leader with the title of hegumen. They had a common assembly and by

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