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Debating the Faith in Early Islamic Egypt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 June 2019

PHIL BOOTH
PHIL BOOTH*
Affiliation:
St Peter’s College, Oxford OX1 2DL; e-mail: philip.booth@theology.ox.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article explores a series of doctrinal disputations held in early Islamic Egypt, and known through the Hodegos of Anastasius of Sinai (fl. c. 670–c. 700). Using the text's prosopographical and contextual cues, it argues that these disputations occurred in the 680s, in the aftermath of Constantinople's Sixth Ecumenical Council (680/1), the decisions of which had thrown the Chalcedonian Christians of the caliphate into conflict and schism. In 686, it is argued, Anastasius had confronted the famed Edessene and Severan Athanasius bar Gūmōyē before the Marwānid prince ‘Abd al-'Azīz at Fusṭāṭ, and there been defeated. That defeat is indicative of the new-found position of the Egyptian Severan Church, which now flourished under Marwānid patronage.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 70 , Issue 4 , October 2019 , pp. 691 - 707
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

For the historian of the Coptic Church, no decades are perhaps more frustrating than those which fall between the Arab conquest (639–42) and the governorship of ‘Abd al-Azīz b. Marwān (685–705). Both the final phase of Roman rule and the Marwānid period are presented in a number of quite detailed narratives. But for ecclesiastical affairs in the crucial decades between we must depend upon a scattering of less substantial witnesses: a small number of incomplete festal letters;Footnote 1 a series of later legends, constructed around the patriarch Benjamin (627–65);Footnote 2 and the impressionistic, and somewhat superficial, Lives of the latter and his successor Agathon (665–81) now embedded, in Arabic, in the two recensions of the tenth-century History of the patriarchs.Footnote 3

A possible light upon these dark decades is nevertheless provided in a source which Coptologists have often neglected: the Hodegos of Anastasius of SinaiFootnote 4 – scholar, raconteur and traveller in the eastern Mediterranean during the earliest phase of Arab rule (fl. c. 670–c. 700).Footnote 5 Long ago Marcel Richard argued that the Hodegos was published in two different editions – one belonging to the period soon after the Arab conquest; and a second, with some additional sections and scholia, belonging to the period c. 686–c. 689.Footnote 6 The text's recent editor, Karl-Heinz Uthemann, has refined this same position, arguing that Anastasius had compiled the Hodegos from revised parts of his pre-existing corpus, and added certain scholia which bear witness to a second redaction of the relevant parts. He therefore nuances Richard's notion of two publications, but argues that the final text, as a ‘Gesamtwerk’, appeared at the earliest in 686–9.Footnote 7

The Hodegos is a long defence of Chalcedonian doctrine targeted at both the Severans and the Julianists, and is presented as a disputational handbook. Within it, Anastasius several times refers to his experience in disputing with anti-Chalcedonians in Egypt and Syria, and he seems to have been known as something of a public controversialist.Footnote 8 In chapter 10, however, he gives a fuller sense of this experience, for he there offers a remarkable account of four disputations in which he participated at Alexandria, and names several Severan interlocutors.Footnote 9 These disputations have sometimes been situated in the 630s, or in the period c. 640–c. 680; but based upon their prosopographical and contextual cues, this article will argue for their decisive placement in the 680s, in the shadow of the Sixth Ecumenical Council (680/1). The disputations thus belong to a crucial period of transition, in which the Chalcedonian bishops of Egypt fell into schism and dissent, and in which their Severan rivals seized the ascendancy, harnessing the support of the Marwānid authorities at Fusṭāṭ.

The disputations in Alexandria

The evidence for the disputations themselves is described in four sections at Hodegos 10.1–4.Footnote 10 In the first, Anastasius states that he was in Alexandria and – knowing that the Theodosians, Gaianites and others claimed that Cyril had equated physis and hypostasis – submitted to ‘the heretics’ a confession in which he recognised that nature also indicates person, to which the recipients responded in the affirmative – ‘for no nature is aprosōpos or anhypostatos’. A gathering of the elite, the people and the clerics of the different factions then met in public, and Anastasius, having prepared a florilegium in advance, proceeded to show how the agreed equation of nature and person would render Cyril and various other patristic luminaries Nestorian. At this, he reports, his opponents were dumbfounded, and all the people of the Church challenged them (‘in the commonplace language of the Alexandrians’) either to burn the books of the Fathers, or to accept the Council of Chalcedon. The attendees then fashioned a memorable maxim: ‘Give it to the Theodosian and to the Gaianite, if he seeks something – and at once it will be destroyed.’Footnote 11 So ends Anastasius’ triumphant account of the first disputation.

The Hodegos now passes to a second meeting – which Anastasius calls variously a ‘disputation’ (διάλεξις), ‘colloquium’ (σύλλογος) and ‘council’ (συνέδριον) – which the same opponents, whom he calls Severans or Theodosians, convened ‘likewise in the public armoury’ (? ‘ὁμοίως ἐν τῇ φαύρικι τῇ δημοσίᾳ’). To this, Anastasius reports, came their leading disputant, ‘the monk John called “of Zyga”, of the Oktokaidekaton’ (‘ὁ λεγόμενος τοῦ Ζυγᾶ, ὁ τοῦ ὀκτωκαιδεκάτου’), and with him ‘Gregory Nystazōn, the Syro-Egyptian-minded’ (‘ὁ Νυστάζων ὁ Συραιγύπτιος τὸν νοῦν’), along with ‘the people and the clergy’. Anastasius proceeds into a long refutation of the proposition that Cyril had equated physis and hypostasis, a refutation punctuated with some dialogue with his two interlocutors, and with long citations from patristic authorities. He then springs a trap, however, for he produces a pre-prepared dogmatic tome in which he has hidden citations from the Fathers under the name of Flavian of Constantinople, in order to show that the Severans will irrationally condemn anything attributed to him. His opponents of course oblige, and when the ruse is revealed, in Anastasius’ telling, ‘the poor people’ in the audience insult and verge on stoning them. ‘Such was the scandal and shame which John and those with him suffered in public.’Footnote 12

The third disputation, again with the Theodosians, is said to have been held ‘in the presence of the Augustalis [αὐγουστάλιος], during a public audience, and of the city’. Anastasius reports that his opponents, following the defeat of John and Gregory, summoned certain bishops ‘in Egypt’ who were considered learned, and ‘amongst whom also was the bishop of Cynopolis’ (‘ὁ Κυνωπολίτης’). These bishops then petitioned the Αugustalis to organise another Christological disputation and, when Anastasius had presented himself at ‘the praetorium’, began to denounce him as one who had disturbed the city, the people and their Church. Anastasius then writes out a brief confession of faith (‘He is the divine Word who was begotten from the Father before all the ages, was crucified and entombed, and suffered and rose again’), and offers to commune with them. The bishops approve and add their signatures, at which point Anastasius approaches ‘the one who seemed the more wise of them’ and, taking him gently by the beard, and addressing him as ‘Theopaschite’, proclaims that he has deliberately omitted from his confession all mention of flesh, or incarnation, or of birth from the Virgin, in order to expose their latent theopaschism. The bishops (‘as if awakening from drunkenness’) then demand the confession be returned, but Anastasius refuses, ‘until I have presented it to Christ as evidence against you on the day of judgement’.Footnote 13

The final consecutive chapter concerns a disputation (διάλεξις) ‘against the same heterodox in Alexandria, I mean against George the priest and registrar (?) of their church, called “Locksmith”’ (‘πρὸς Γεώργιον τὸν πρεσβύτερον καὶ λογογράφον τῆς ἐκκλησίας αὐτῶν τὸν λεγόμενον Κλειδοποιόν’). Anastasius’ account is, in contrast to preceding chapters, rather brief. He claims that ‘their appointees’ stated that no nature is anhypostatos, so that two natures therefore demand two hypostasies or prosōpa in Christ, and four hypostaseis or prosōpa in the Trinity. He then dupes his opponents into defending the equation of hypostasis and prosōpon, before proceeding to claim that this would render Cyril's proclamation ‘The hypostaseis of Christ remained unconfused’ as Nestorian. Nothing further is reported, but let us note that the anecdote is introduced with an interesting detail: that it occurred ‘in the chancellery of the Kaisarion (ἐν τῷ σημειογραφείῳ τοῦ Καισαρίου)’, that is, in the Chalcedonian cathedral church.

Dating the disputations

When should we place the disputations? Anastasius seems to describe a period of Chalcedonian dominance, in which meetings were gathered at the Kaisarion, and in which an Augustalis – who Anastasius suggests is a ChalcedonianFootnote 14 – presided over the reported defeat of prominent Severans at the praetorium.Footnote 15 Richard suggested that the context for discussions was the aftermath of the famous monenergist union of 633, during the last decade of Roman rule.Footnote 16 But the content of the disputations does not demand this, and the ideological context of monenergism was rapprochement, rather than recrimination.Footnote 17 Indeed, as Uthemann has argued, nothing prevents a date within the period of Arab rule, not even the mention of an Augustalis.Footnote 18 He points out that the title augustalios continued into the Arab period, and cites a document from the Qurra archive, dated to 711, which indeed refers to a ‘Theodore augoustalios’ in Alexandria.Footnote 19 To this can be added two more witnesses: another document, perhaps from the same archive and dated 709, refers to an augoustalios in connection with Alexandria;Footnote 20 while a further reference within Mena of Nikiu's Life of Isaac confirms that it was in use in Alexandria in about 692.Footnote 21 This, it should be noted, is quite striking. Following the reforms of Justinian, the title augoustalios, once the preserve of the praefectus augustalis in Alexandria, had devolved to the new provincial duces, including those of the Thebaid and (from the 630s) of Arcadia; and although the Arabs adopted the same provincial organisation, the documentation indicates that following the conquest the duces of Arcadia and the Thebaid, at least, lost the title.Footnote 22 It seems, therefore, either that the title continued in Alexandria when elsewhere it was dropped; or that it was revived there after a hiatus.

Although the use of the title augoustalios is ambiguous in chronological terms, the prosopographical details offer an unrecognised prop to Uthemann's position, and perhaps allow the episodes to be placed with more precision.Footnote 23 Amongst Anastasius’ interlocutors nothing is known of John or of George, besides what can be extracted from the text: John was a monk of the famous Oktokaidekaton complex to the west of Alexandria;Footnote 24 while George ‘the Locksmith’ and logographos seems otherwise unknown.Footnote 25 It nevertheless might be possible to identify Gregory, even if the origins of his soubriquet, ho Nystazōn (‘the Dozer’?), remain obscure.Footnote 26 There is one prominent Gregory amongst the Severans of this period – the bishop of Kais/Qays. He came to prominence during the patriarchate of Agathon (665–81),Footnote 27 served as patriarchal vicar for Lower Egypt during the patriarchate of Isaac (689–92)Footnote 28 and remained a leading figure up to the earliest reign of Alexander (704–30), before which he had even served as patriarchal locum tenens (700–4).Footnote 29 The coincidence of names is, of course, far from decisive. But the ‘Primitive’ recension of the History of the patriarchs – which bears witness to the earliest extant version of the text – calls Gregory a Syrian (كان سرياني ), which would complement Anastasius’ description of Gregory Nystazōn as Syraigyptios.Footnote 30 Kais/Qays, moreover, is the Coptic/Arabic for Cynopolis, so that it is tempting to suppose that Gregory bishop of Kais, Gregory Nystazōn, and ho Kynopolitēs, the anonymous bishop of Cynopolis (Anastasius’ one named opponent in the third disputation), are all one and the same – that prominent ecclesiastic whose floruit is c. 665–c. 710.Footnote 31

What then of the dominance of the Chalcedonians? It is known that the Chalcedonian patriarchate had been dissolved in about 651/2, but Chalcedonism seems to have remained strong for several decades, in particular at Alexandria.Footnote 32 For the most part the History of the patriarchs remains silent on the fate of the Chalcedonian Church, but under Agathon it nevertheless chooses to report how the governor at Alexandria was then one Theodosius, ‘who was a head in a congregation of the Chalcedonians [ كان رئيسا فى جماعة من الخلقدونيين ], and was an opponent of the orthodox Theodosians’. He is said to have persecuted Agathon, exacting from him huge amounts of tax, and even issuing a command that he be stoned if seen in the street. Theodosius, the History of the patriarchs explains, had travelled to Yazīd b. Mu‘āwiya, ‘the leader of the Muslims’ at Damascus, paid him a bribe and been granted power over Alexandria, Mareotis and surrounding regions, independent of the governor at Fusṭāṭ.Footnote 33 Although the precise nature of his position is uncertain, Theodosius fits the profile of Anastasius’ Augustalis, who holds an otherwise unusual office (had he revived the ancient Alexandrian title augoustalios?), who adheres to Chalcedon and who presides over Severan defeats. Theodosius’ tenure, moreover, can be placed in a narrow time frame. Since the History of the patriarchs implies that he was appointed (rather than renewed) under the caliph Yazīd i (680–3), and has him both persecuting Agathon (665–81) and dying soon after the enthronement of John iii (681–9), he must have held office for a brief period c. 680–c. 682.Footnote 34 I would suggest, therefore, that Anastasius’ second and third disputation – and in all likelihood all four – occurred in that brief period.

Anastasius in Marwānid Egypt

It is not impossible, of course, that Anastasius is describing an earlier decade, and that the disputations were in fact organised under a previous prefect or dux in Alexandria, now invisible to us. Nevertheless, another detail within the Hodegos indicates that Anastasius was indeed active in Egypt in the 680s. He exults in the Alexandrian disputations, recounting, with undisguised glee, how he duped his opponents through various ruses, and earned the audience's acclamations. The actual course of these disputations is of course impossible to recover – but if Anastasius was willing to indulge in gross distortion, it is notable that he does not do so with reference to another disputation which he twice mentions in passing, once in chapter 6, and once again in chapter 10, while reporting the first disputation; that with ‘Athanasius in Babylon’, qualified in chapter 6 as ‘the notarios’.Footnote 35 Here Anastasius is far more circumspect – suggesting, perhaps, that the outcome was less positive. This disputation must have occurred in the Arab period, when the old Roman fortress had become the site of the new Arab miṣr of Fusṭāṭ, and when ‘Babylon’ often functioned, in Greek and Coptic documents and texts, as a synonym for it. Anastasius, therefore, participated in a prestigious debate at the new Arab capital.

But who is Athanasius, the humble notarios who debated Anastasius in so exalted a forum? The most obvious candidate for Anastasius’ interlocutor is the famous (but far from humble) Athanasius bar Gūmōyē, an Edessene and Severan who headed the dīwān of Fusṭāṭ, alongside the Egyptian Isaac, during the governorship of ‘Abd al-‘Azīz b. Marwān (685–705). Athanasius – who is memorialised in a number of Coptic,Footnote 36 Syriac,Footnote 37 Christian ArabicFootnote 38 and Islamic ArabicFootnote 39 sources, as well as in Greek documentsFootnote 40 – served as a prominent patron of the Severan Church throughout his period in Egypt.Footnote 41 Anastasius’ labelling of his Athanasius as notarios might suggest a person of lesser status, since Athanasius bar Gūmōyē’s title was, or became, chartoularios – an exalted role within the fisc, bearing the high honorific of endoxotatos.Footnote 42 But in a fiscal register from 698/9, which bears a Greek-Arabic protocol naming ‘Abd al-‘Azīz, we indeed find both Athanasius and Isaac called notarios.Footnote 43 Anastasius refers to ‘Athanasius the notarios in Babylon’ as though no further explanation were required – and contemporaries cannot have failed to understand whom he intended.

It is certain that Anastasius was familiar with the Egyptian Severan scene during Athanasius’ tenure. Chapter 15 of the Hodegos is entitled, ‘Regarding the sixth festal (or rather lamentable) letter of him who is now bishop of the Theodosians in Alexandria, which was sent to Babylon’ (‘Περὶ τῆς ἑορταστικῆς, μᾶλλον δὲ θρηνητικῆς, ϛʹ ἐπιστολῆς τοῦ νῦν ἐπισκόπου τῶν Θεοδοσιανῶν ἐν Ἀλεξανδρείᾳ τῆς πεμφθείσης ἐν Βαβυλῶνι’). Anastasius recounts some of the arguments which seem to have been presented in the letter: that confessing two natures in Christ demands two natures also in the Trinity, since everything which is predicated of Christ must also be predicated of the Father and Spirit; and that for this reason we do not confess ‘two unified natures in Christ, nor indeed wills, nor again operations’.Footnote 44 To this account Anastasius, in his second redaction of the Hodegos, has added a scholion which reads: ‘John the bishop of the Theodosians five years ago in two of his festal letters [Ἰωάννης ὁ ἐπίσκοπος τῶν Θεοδοσιανῶν πρὸ πέντε χρόνων ἐν δύο ἑορταστικαῖς αὐτοῦ] set out the pronouncement which said, “All the things which are said of Christ are all said of both the Father and the Holy Spirit.”’ The scholion then concludes: ‘And when we had attacked the first letter he set forth the same things again in the subsequent year.’Footnote 45

This passage constitutes one of the rare places in which the Hodegos refers to a named contemporary – John iii, Severan patriarch 681–9 – and is indeed crucial to the dating of its most recent and authoritative commentator, Uthemann. In contrast to Richard, Uthemann does not presume that the scholion belongs to the period in which the Hodegos was finished since, he points out, it might have been added in the process of redacting and compiling individual sections, rather than at the text's completion. Assuming that John is alive at the time of writing, Uthemann therefore posits a terminus post quem for the final form of the Hodegos between 686 (the earliest possible date in which a festal letter of John could be said to have been sent ‘five years ago’) and 689 (the end of John's patriarchate); the terminus ante quem for the final form he places in about 701, when Anastasius is last encountered, alive but ailing.Footnote 46 For Uthemann, moreover, the unnamed patriarch whose sixth festal letter prompted Anastasius’ refutation in the earlier redaction of chapter 15 cannot be John, since his sixth festal letter would have fallen in 686, while the later scholion must concern festal letters composed, at the latest, in 684 (five years before John's death). Thus Uthemann attributes the sixth festal letter to John's predecessor Agathon (664–81), placing it at Easter 670 and dating the earlier redaction of chapter 15 to the period 670–81, with the patriarch still alive.Footnote 47

If the most part of chapter 15 was indeed written in this period, then this would contradict the identification of ‘Athanasius the notarios’ with Athanasius bar Gūmōyē – which Uthemann himself also contemplates without considering the chronological consequencesFootnote 48 – since the reference to the former within it is not contained within a scholion, and seems therefore to belong to the earlier redaction, while the latter served from 685.Footnote 49 Perhaps it should be seen as an interpolation. But Uthemann's dating of the earlier redaction is also not decisive. It rests on an insistence that John is alive at the time of the scholion, but this is not demanded in the text, in particular if it is conceived as an elucidation of the earlier redaction. If we follow André Binggeli and instead avoid this assumption, then the ‘sixth letter’ might well be that of John, sent in 686, so that the scholion, a marginal note, does little more than expand upon it, indicating the author, restating its main argument, and noting that that argument was then repeated in the subsequent letter.Footnote 50 In this case the earlier redaction of chapter 15 would belong to the period between the festal letters of 686 and 687, while the scholion, and thus the later redaction, would belong at the earliest to 691 or 692. Thus nothing would prevent the earlier redaction pointing to a meeting of Anastasius and Athanasius bar Gūmōyē. At the same time, this position allows us to explain two otherwise inconvenient facts about the ‘sixth letter’: first, that it is said to have denounced two wills (more obvious, as we shall see, after 681);Footnote 51 and, second, that it is qualified as ‘sent to Babylon’ (‘τῆς πεμφθείσης ἐν Βαβυλῶνι’). The reason for that qualification, one suspects, is that at the time of the festal letter of 686, Anastasius was himself at the Arab capital, there to debate the eminent chartoularios Athanasius, no doubt in the presence of ‘Abd al-‘Azīz.Footnote 52 All the indications suggest that the outcome was far less triumphant, for Anastasius, than the earlier disputations in Alexandria.Footnote 53

Anastasius and the Sixth Ecumenical Council

From several perspectives the governorship of ‘Abd al-‘Azīz emerges as a formative period for the Severan Church in Egypt. After several decades in which little Coptic literature can be located with confidence, a range of contemporaneous authors can again be named – John iii,Footnote 54 John of Nikiu,Footnote 55 Mena of Nikiu,Footnote 56 George the Archdeacon,Footnote 57 Zacharias of XoisFootnote 58 – all of whom were somehow connected to the upper echelons of the Severan patriarchate. Within some of their texts – in particular in Mena's Life of Isaac, and in George's contribution to the History of the patriarchs Footnote 59 – the rule of ‘Abd al-‘Azīz is celebrated as a period of tolerance and expansion, when the Severan patriarch assumed a permanent place within the governor's entourage, and when a number of Severan churches and monasteries were established at Ḥulwān, ‘Abd al-‘Azīz's new foundation to the south of Fusṭāt.Footnote 60 Under the patronage of the governor and his two Christian chartoularioi, the Severans seem to have made important inroads, perhaps for the first time, into Alexandria. Thus it is noted in Severan texts that under John iii (681–9), the son and successor of Theodosius – our suspected Augustalis – became reconciled with the patriarch;Footnote 61 that the same John and his successor Isaac (689–c. 692), with the assistance of Athanasius and Isaac, rebuilt the Alexandrian churches of St Mark and the Angelion;Footnote 62 and that, for the first time, ‘the Hundred’ were able to convene there – perhaps a gathering of all Severan bishops and most higoumens.Footnote 63

Such tales of tolerance might have been constructed in retrospect, as the long rule of ‘Abd al-‘Azīz gave out to those of his more aggressive successors.Footnote 64 But there is good reason to suppose that the evident explosion in Severan literature, with all its (perhaps exaggerated) reports of Severan success, was bound up with a simultaneous crisis of Egyptian Chalcedonism. It is probable that the Chalcedonians who remained in post-conquest Egypt were adherents of the doctrine of monenergism (Christ's single operation) and of monotheletism (Christ's single will), both of which Constantinople had supported, in one form or another, since the 630s.Footnote 65 In the last phase of Roman rule, monenergism had brought numerous prominent Severan Christians into communion with Constantinople,Footnote 66 and it seems that the Chalcedonians of Alexandria remained committed to it. In the Arab period it continued to exercise the Severan patriarch Benjamin and, perhaps, Agathon;Footnote 67 and in 662 Theodore, the alleged Chalcedonian topotērētēs of the Alexandrian see, participated in a high-profile council at Constantinople which condemned Maximus the Confessor, the leading Chalcedonian opponent of monenergism and monotheletism.Footnote 68 In 680/1, however, the so-called Sixth Ecumenical Council reversed several decades of eastern Roman doctrine, and instead endorsed belief in Christ's two operations and wills. For those Chalcedonian Christians who now lived within the caliphate, the volte-face was no doubt a political and theological disaster.Footnote 69

No Egyptian bishops had attended the Sixth Council, but the Acts nevertheless claim that a topotērētēs, the monk and priest Peter, represented the see of Alexandria.Footnote 70 Soon after, it seems that Peter was promoted, for at the Constantinopolitan Quinisext Council (691/2) he is present not as topotērētēs but as bishop of the same see.Footnote 71 Whether Peter had been dispatched from Alexandria itself – rather than being a Roman stand-in, as later allegedFootnote 72 – is uncertain, but it is not a great leap to imagine that ‘Abd al-‘Azīz's reported patronage of the Severans might have been a product, at least in part, of a heightened perception that the caliphate's principal antagonist, the Roman emperor, continued to exercise a claim over the Chalcedonians living under Arab rule. If the Council thus increased the political pressure on the Chalcedonian leadership, it also presented it with some difficult if not impossible theological choices – to denounce the Council, and cleave to a doctrine which no patriarch now recognised; to follow the Constantinopolitan lead, and abandon previous commitments (risking Severan ridicule);Footnote 73 or to renounce Chalcedon altogether, and commune with the ascendant Severan Church. It is not surprising that the History of the patriarchs’ first reports of specific, large-scale conversions from the Chalcedonian cause occur in its Life of John iii.Footnote 74

If the dating of the earlier redaction of chapter 10 is correct, then it must have been composed in the shadow of the Sixth Council. It is true that book 10, and indeed the Hodegos as a whole, never mentions the Council – this indeed was the basis for Richard's supposition that a first edition of the text was composed long before it.Footnote 75 But the Hodegos in fact maintains a remarkable silence on the entire monenergist-monothelete crisis, mentioning none of its protagonists or main events. Indeed, although Anastasius refutes at great length the Severan commitment to the ‘one operation’, he makes no explicit comment on Chalcedonians committed to the single operation or will – even in two opening sections which, as Uthemann has demonstrated, derive from earlier Anastasian texts which were intended, in their original form, as critiques of Chalcedonian monenergism and monotheletism.Footnote 76 The silence on the Council is therefore part of a far deeper discomfort, and the reason is not difficult to divine.Footnote 77 In the 680s the Roman condemnation of monenergism-monotheletism was a contentious and doubtless embarrassing issue for those Chalcedonians active in the caliphate, and it is certain that it created a significant schism in Alexandria. In two scholia to chapter 6 of the Hodegos – which are, like that on John iii, a crucial witness to a stage of redaction after 681 – Anastasius mentions certain persons whom he calls Ἁρμασίται, indicating that his argument against the Severans and their ‘one nature’ also applied to this group and its ‘[one] theandric operation’.Footnote 78 This monenergist faction is known from a single other source. The Doctrina patrum cites an interpolated version of the Synodical letter of Sophronius of Jerusalem (634), which is expanded to include those condemned at the Sixth Council, but also adds, ‘The Harmasius who has until now been combating the truth in Alexandria.’Footnote 79 It is probable, therefore that Harmasius headed a Chalcedonian schism at Alexandria which refused to recognise the Sixth Council.Footnote 80 At what stage these scholia have been added to book 6 is uncertain, except that it occurred, in all likelihood, in the period c. 686–c. 701 (since the main text of book 6 also contains, as we have seen, a reference to the debate with Athanasius). But the absence of such allusions from other parts of the Hodegos does not mean that those parts were written, redacted or compiled in ignorance of the Sixth Council.

At some point in the period c. 680–c. 682 – during the caliphate of Yazīd, and the tenure of the Chalcedonian Augustalis Theodosius – the celebrated polemicist Anastasius of Sinai engaged in a series of disputations with the Severans at Alexandria, amongst whom was the celebrated bishop, Gregory of Kais. As Anastasius presents things, the issues discussed were perennial issues of Chalcedonian–Severan disagreement – that is, the definition and interrelation of different ontological terms – and he emerged victorious through a combination of guile (his own) and gullibility (his opponents’). Various uncertainties, however, still surround the discussions. What, for example, had brought Anastasius to Alexandria in the first place? What was his relationship to other Chalcedonians there (especially the monenergists)? Did the disputations in fact involve discussion of the energies and wills? Was he then aware of the Sixth Council? Might Anastasius even have been an agent of those bishops who recognised it (for example, Epiphanius, archbishop of Cyprus)?Footnote 81 Was Anastasius, then, less a champion of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, and more a herald of the Sixth? And is the Hodegos a subsequent attempt to return to basics, to underline, in a context of burgeoning schism and of Severan ascent, the shared Chalcedonian refutation of one-nature Christologies?

We can but speculate. But it seems clear that the triumphalism of Anastasius’ account of the Alexandrian disputations disguises, or stands upon the threshold of, a far more disastrous situation. Two contemporaneous developments conspired against the Chalcedonians in Egypt: first, the decisions of the Sixth Council put them in an impossible political and theological position, and created a schism with those who still defended monenergism and monotheletism; and second, the advent of the Marwānid regime gave new impetus to the Severans, who flourished and expanded under the patronage of ‘Abd al-‘Azīz and his two Severan chartoularioi, Athanasius and Isaac. Anastasius indeed encountered the former, the famous Athanasius bar Gūmōyē, in a disputation held at Babylon-Fusṭāt in 686, soon after the reception of John iii’s sixth festal letter, in which the latter had denounced the Sixth Council. This must have been a high-profile affair, but Anastasius maintains a modest, and thus uncharacteristic, silence on its content and its outcome. Within that silence, it is possible to perceive a defeat; but perhaps also a troubling realisation: that the Severans were ascendant, and that the centre that now mattered most for the Churches in Egypt was not Alexandria, with its fracturing Chalcedonian population, and still less Constantinople. It was rather the rising Arab capital at Fusṭāt.

Footnotes

I would like to thank Marek Jankowiak and Christian Sahner for their comments on an earlier version of this paper.

References

1 See Benjamin of Alexandria, 16th festal letter, ed. (Ethiopic) Müller, C. D. G., in Die Homilie über die Hochzeit zu Kana und weitere Schriften des Patriarchen Benjamin I. von Alexandrien, Heidelberg 1968, 302–51Google Scholar, and P.Köln V 215 (2 Apr. 663/674), with Hagedorn, U. and Hagedorn, D., ‘Monotheletisch interpretierte Väterzitate und eine Anleihe bei Johannes Chrysostomus in dem Kölner Osterfestbrief (P. Köln V 215)’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik clxxviii (2011), 143–57Google Scholar.

2 See, for example, (Ps.-)Benjamin of Alexandria, On the marriage at Cana, ed. C. D. G. Müller, in Die Homilie über die Hochzeit zu Kana, 52–285, esp. pp. 132–269; or the fragment of a letter edited by E. Amélineau: ‘Fragments coptes pour servir à l'histoire de la conquête de l’Égypte par les Arabes’, Journal asiatique 8th ser. xii (1888), 361–410 at pp. 368–78.

3 For the HP (Primitive) – thought to witness an earlier state of the text – see Seybold, C. F., Severus ibn al Muqaffa’, Alexandrinische Patriarchengeschichte von S. Marcus bis Michael I 61–767 nach der ältesten 1266 geschriebenen Hamburger Handschrift, Hamburg 1912Google Scholar. For the HP (Vulgate) see Evetts, B., ‘History of the patriarchs of the Coptic Church of Alexandria’, PO i (1904), 99–214Google Scholar, 381–518; v (1910), 1–215; x (1915), 357–552. On the nature and limits of this distinction see Pilette, P., ‘L'Histoire des patriarches d'Alexandrie: une nouvelle évaluation de la configuration du texte en recensions’, Le Muséon cxxvi (2013), 419–50Google Scholar. Note that for the dates of the Severan patriarchs this article follows Jülicher, A., ‘Die Liste der alexandrinischen Patriarchen im 6. und 7. Jahrhundert’, in Festgabe von Fachgenossen und Freunden Karl Müller zum siebzigsten Geburtstag dargebracht, Tübingen 1922, 7–23Google Scholar.

4 Anastasius of Sinai, Hodegos, ed. Uthemann, K.-H., in Anastasii Sinaitae Viae Dux, Turnhout 1981Google Scholar.

5 On Anastasius see now Uthemann's, K.-H. magisterial Anastasios Sinaites: byzantinisches Christentum in den ersten Jahrzehnten unter arabischer Herrschaft, Berlin 2015Google Scholar. Several of Uthemann's central arguments are summarised in his ‘Anastasius the Sinaite’, in A. Di Berardino (ed.), Patrology: the eastern Fathers from the Council of Chalcedon (451) to John of Damascus († 750), Cambridge 2006, 313–31, and ‘Anastase le Sinaïte’, in C.-G. Conticello (ed.), La Théologie byzantine et sa tradition, I/1: (VIe–VIIe s.), Turnhout 2015. For a wider perspective on Anastasius and his corpus, however, see Haldon, J., ‘The works of Anastasius of Sinai: a key source for the history of seventh-century East Mediterranean society and belief’, in Cameron, A. and Conrad, L. (eds), The Byzantine and early Islamic Near East, I: Problems in the literary source material, Princeton 1992, 107–47Google Scholar.

6 Richard, M., ‘Anastase le Sinaïte: l'Hodegos et le Monothélisme’, Revue des études byzantines xvi (1958), 29–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 See Uthemann, Anastasii Sinaitae Viae Dux, ccvi–ccxviii, and Anastasios Sinaites, esp. pp. 17–215.

8 See Hodegos i.3.28–30; vi.1.111–16; xiv.2.65–7. See also the brief reference to a debate with Colluthus, a Jewish sophist, at Antinoe: Hodegos xiv.1.37–9.

9 For his presence in Alexandria see the scholia at ibid. xxii.4.70–2; xxii.5.26.

10 For the theological content see Uthemann, Anastasios Sinaites, 52–62.

11 See Hodegos x.1.1–3 (Uthemann edn, 143–59).

12 Hodegos x.2 (Uthemann edn, 159–90).

13 Hodegos x.3 (Uthemann edn, 190–2).

14 See the words put into the Augustalis's mouth at Hodegos x.3.17–19 (Uthemann edn, 191): ‘These bishops, upon hearing what occurred between the church and the Theodosians, came here seeking to dispute with your holiness.’ Pace Uthemann, Anastasios Sinaites 56, who suggests that the Augustalis considers Anastasius a troublemaker, and is aligned with the Severans.

15 Note that between his accounts of the second and third disputations, Anastasius describes how, when he despaired at a certain passage in Cyril's To Succensus, ‘lord Isidore the librarian of the patriarchal palace [ὁ βιβλιοφύλαξ τοῦ πατριαρχείου] produced for me a book which contained this citation unadulterated’: Hodegos x.2.176–90 (Uthemann edn, 188–9).

16 Richard, ‘Anastase le Sinaïte’, 35–42.

17 See, for example, Ohme, H., ‘Oikonomia im monenergetisch–monotheletischen Streit’, Zeitschrift für antikes Christentum xii (2008), 308–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar at pp. 314–15, 332–3.

18 See Uthemann, Anastasios Sinaites, 54–6.

19 ‘Θεοδῶρῳ αὐγουσταλίῳ’: P.Lond. IV 1392 l. 13. This is in the context of a dispatch to Alexandria. I am grateful to Sophie Kovarik for checking the reading in the British Library, which is clear. This Theodore is perhaps identical with the ‘Theodore archon (ارخن) of the city of Alexandria’ whom the HP (Primitive) (Seybold edn, 122), HP (Vulgate) (Evetts edn, PO v. 26–7) places there c. 700.

20 SB XX 15101. On the office of Alexandrian Augustalis after the conquest see now Bruning, J., The rise of a capital: Al-Fusṭāṭ and its hinterland, 18/639–132/750, Leiden 2018, 45–9Google Scholar.

21 Mena of Nikiu, Life of Isaac 13, ed. Porcher, E. in ‘Vie d'Isaac, patriarche d'Alexandrie de 686 à 689, écrite par Mena, évêque de Pchati’, PO xi (1915), 299–390Google Scholar at p. 379, describing the later part of Isaac's patriarchate (689–c. 692).

22 See, for example, in Arcadia: P.Prag. I 64 (28 May 636): ‘Φλ(αουίῳ) Θεοδοσίῳ τῷ εὐκλεεστάτῳ στρατηλά(τῃ) δουκὶ καὶ αὐγουσταλίῳ ταύτης τῆς Ἀρκάδων ἐπαρχ(ίας)’. But cf. the absence of augoustalios in, for example, BGU III 750 (21 Aug. 655), CPR XIV 32 (19 Aug. 655/670), CPR VIII 82 (9 Aug. 699/700), 83 (676–725).

23 Uthemann makes the cautious suggestion that the meetings might have occurred under Benjamin or Agathon: Anastasios Sinaites, 56.

24 See Gascou, J., ‘Oktokaidekaton’, in Atiya, A. S. (ed.), The Coptic encyclopedia, New York 1991Google Scholar, vi. 1826b–7b.

25 One candidate is the deacon, and then priest, George, whom the bishops attempted to elect as patriarch after John iii: see HP (Primitive) (Seybold edn, 120); HP (Vulgate) (Evetts edn, PO v. 22–4); Mena of Nikiu, Life of Isaac 11 (Porcher edn, 348–53).

26 Note that at Hodegos x.2.6.1 (Uthemann edn, 175) we find instead Γρηγόριος ὁ Νυστάξας.

27 See HP (Primitive) (Seybold edn, 114); HP (Vulgate) (Evetts edn, PO v. 9).

28 Mena of Nikiu, Life of Isaac (Porcher edn, 354). ‘Lower’ is perhaps here a mistake for ‘Upper’.

29 See HP (Primitive) (Seybold edn, 120, 129, 133); HP (Vulgate) (Evetts edn, PO v 20, 22, 42, 49).

30 ‘And the blessed bishop Gregory, bishop of Kais, was a Syrian, and [Agathon] had appointed him as a bishop’ ( والاسقف المغبوط غريغوريس اسفق القيس كان سرياني وكان اوسمه اسقف ’): HP (Primitive) (Seybold edn, 114); cf. HP (Vulgate) (Evetts edn, PO v. 9), which seems to misread the same passage and to create a phantom ‘Joseph’: ‘In [Agathon's] time was the blessed bishop Gregory, bishop of Kais, and a Syrian called Joseph’ ( وكان قى ايامه الاسقف المغبوط اغريغوريوس اسقف القيس وسريانى اسمه يوسف ). Note that ‘and’ (– و ) in the previous sentence has been added by the editor (ibid. n. 6). I am grateful to Julien Decharneux for his comments on these passages. For the distinction between the two recensions see n. 3 above.

31 Note that in introducing the third disputation Hodegos x.3.4–9 states: ‘And so with the heretics sufficiently and unambiguously disgraced by the drama which we inflicted upon them, and since they no longer had anyone left to open their mouth against those of the catholic church, they sent into Egypt and summoned certain bishops whom they considered learned – amongst whom was also the bishop of Cynopolis [ἐν οἷς καὶ ἦν ὁ Κυνωπολίτης]’ (Uthemann edn, 190). This might suggest a distinction between the latter and Gregory Nystazōn, although the qualification ‘also’ suggests to me that the bishop participated but was not amongst those who had to be summoned.

32 For the end of the patriarchate see the patriarchal lists in Theophanes, Chronographia, AM 6136–45 (= 644/5–653/4), ed. de Boor, C. in Theophanis chronographia, Leipzig 1883, 343Google Scholar; Nicephorus, Chronographia, ed. C. de Boor, in Nicephori archiepiscopi Constantinopolitani opuscula historica, Leipzig 1880, 81–135 at p. 129; Eutychius, Annals (Antiochene Recension), ed. L. Cheiko, in Eutychii patriarchae Alexandrini annals, Beirut 1906–9, ii. 28. The last Roman patriarch, Peter, was appointed in July 642: John of Nikiu, Chronicle 121, ed. Zotenberg, H., in Chronique de Jean, évêque de Nikiou, Paris 1883, 219Google Scholar. Thereafter a topotērētēs represented the see in East Roman affairs; see nn. 68, 70 below.

33 HP (Primitive) (Seybold edn, 112–13); (Vulgate) (Evetts edn, PO v. 5–6). The latter gives ‘Theodore’, but notes ‘Some mss. have “Theodosius”’ (n.1).

34 Death of Theodosius: HP (Primitive) (Seybold edn, 115); (Vulgate) (Evetts edn, PO v. 10).

35 See Hodegos vi.1.120–1 (Uthemann edn, 99): ὅπερ καὶ προήγαγεν ἡμῖν ἐν Βαβυλῶνι Ἀθανάσιος ὁ νοτάριος (with reference to Severus's Philalethes); Hodegos x.1.2.36–7 (Uthemann edn. 147): Ταύτην τὴν χρῆσιν παραγαγὼν ἠρώτησα Ἀθανάσιον ἐν Βαβυλῶνι λέγων … (with reference to a quotation from Cyril, and with a small amount of subsequent dialogue). See also, at Hodegos iv.3–7 (Uthemann edn, 82), the citation from the Christological letter which Athanasius sent ‘to the holy catholic church in Babylon, when our Christ-loving and orthodox brothers there requested it’. For Anastasius' interest in Babylon see also Tales i.15, 28, 29; ii.14, ed. A. Binggeli, in ‘Anastase le Sinaïte: Récits sur le Sinaï et Récits utiles à l’âme: édition, traduction, commentaire’, unpubl. PhD diss. Paris IV 2001, i. 188, 203, 204, 235; ii. 359–62.

36 Mena of Nikiu, Life of Isaac (Porcher edn, 358–62).

37 Michael the Great, Chronicle xi.16; Chronicle to 1234 cxlix. The pair depend on Dionysius of Tel Maḥre, and Michael reveals that Dionysius in turn depended on one Daniel, son of Samuel, of the Ṭur Abdin.

38 HP (Primitive) (Seybold edn, 116, 122, 135); HP (Vulgate) (Evetts edn, PO v. 12, 48–9, 54); Eutychius, Annals (Antiochene recension) (Cheikho edn, ii. 41); Ps.-Abū Ṣāliḥ, Churches and monasteries of Egypt, ed. B. T. A. Evetts, in Churches and monasteries of Egypt and some neighbouring countries, Oxford 1895, fo. 53a.

39 al-Kindī, Kitāb al–wūlat, ed. R. Guest, in The governors and judges of Egypt, Leiden 1912, 59; perhaps also Ibn ‘Abd al-Ḥakam, Futūḥ Misr, ed. Torrey, C., in Futūḥ Miṣr wa-akhbāruhā, New Haven 1922, 98Google Scholar.

40 See nn. 42–3 below.

41 On Athanasius and the Gūmōyē see Debié, M., ‘Christians in the service of the caliph: through the looking glass of communal identities’, in Borrut, A. and Donner, F. M. (eds), Christians and others in the Umayyad state, Chicago, Il 2016, 53–71Google Scholar.

42 For the office with honorific see P.Lond. IV 1447 lines 139, 141, 144, 189, 191, 192. Athanasius and Isaac also bear the title chaltoularios in Mena of Nikiu, Life of Isaac (for example at pp. 347 and 358 in the Porcher edn).

43 P.Lond. IV 4 1412 (Aphrodito, ind. 12–13) lines 14–15, 20–1, 26–7, 32–3, 38–9, 42–3, 46–7, 55–6, 61–2, 70–1, 86–7, 101–2, 116–17 (the names appearing together in each instance).

44 Anastasius of Sinai, Hodegos xv (Uthemann edn, 264).

45 Ibid. (Uthemann edn, 264–5).

46 For this see Anastasius of Sinai, Against the monotheletes, i.107–8, ed. Uthemann, K.–H. in Sermones duo in constitutionem hominis secundum imaginem Dei, Turnhout 1985, 35–83Google Scholar at p. 61.

47 Uthemann, Anastasios Sinaites, 22–4, 151–7; cf. Richard, ‘Anastase le Sinaïte’, 32.

48 Uthemann, Anastasios, 9–10; cf., however, Binggeli, Anastase le Sinaïte, ii. 343–4, using the reference to Athanasius to support his later dating of the text (see n. 50 below).

49 See the reports in HP (Primitive) (Seybold edn, 116); HP (Vulgate) (Evetts edn, PO v. 12); Michael the Great, Chronicle xi.16; and Chronicle to 1234 cxlix, all suggesting that he was appointed alongside ‘Abd al-‘Azīz.

50 Binggeli, Anastase le Sinaïte, ii. 341–4; contra Uthemann, Anastasios Sinaites, 154–6.

51 On Anastasius’ theological polemic against the letter, which ties the denial of two Christological wills to the earlier, anti-Tritheist assertion that what is said of Christ qua God must also be said of Father and Spirit, see Uthemann, Anastasios Sinaites, 157–60.

52 For ‘Abd al-‘Azīz's later gathering, at Ḥulwān, of the different Christian factions in the period c. 697–c. 700 (reportedly for three years) see HP (Primitive) (Seybold edn, 126–9), HP (Vulgate) (Evetts edn, PO v. 34–42). And cf. n. 59 below, on the Controversy of John.

53 Such a defeat, and a subsequent retreat to Sinai, might also explain the scholion added (in 691 or 692?) to the florilegium within Anastasius’ account of the first disputation, in which he states ‘But since the race of heretics loves blame, know that we wrote the citations from memory while in the desert, and at a loss for instructive books’: Hodegos x.1.2.197–204 (Uthemann edn, 158). This would seem to mean this section of the Hodegos, rather than the original florilegium, since Anastasius before the first disputation was in Alexandria, and active in its libraries.

54 To John iii is attributed the dialogic Questions of Theodore, ed. Lantschoot, A. van, in Les Questions de Théodore: texte sahidique, recensions arabes et éthiopienne, Vatican City 1957Google Scholar; and he is perhaps the patriarch John who authored an Encomium on Saint Menas, ed. Drescher, J., in Apa Mena: a selection of Coptic texts relating to St. Menas, Cairo 1946, 73–96Google Scholar. He is also the reported author of an Encomium on John of Scetis now embedded in the latter's Life: Zanetti, U., Saint Jean, higoumène de Scété (VII siècle): vie arabe et épitomé éthiopien, Brussels 2015Google Scholar.

55 See John of Nikiu, Chronicle, ed. Zotenberg, in Chronique. On his career see HP (Primitive) (Seybold edn, 120, 125); HP (Vulgate) (Evetts edn, PO v. 20–2, 32–4); Mena of Nikiou, Life of the Patriarch Isaac 12 (Porcher edn, 354).

56 See Mena of Nikiu, Life of Isaac. To Mena is also attributed the Martyrdom of Saint Macrobius, ed. (Coptic) Hyvernat, H., in Les Actes des martyrs de l’Égypte tirés des manuscrits coptes de la Bibliothèque Vaticane et du Musée Borgia, Paris 1886–7Google Scholar, 225–46. See HP (Primitive) (Seybold edn, 125); HP (Vulgate) (Evetts edn, PO v. 34).

57 George the Archdeacon was compiler of the biographies from Cyril up to Simon within the HP: Heijer, J. den, Mawhūb ibn Manṣūr ibn Mufarriğ et l'historiographie copto-arabe: étude sur la composition de l'Histoire des patriarches d'Alexandrie, Louvain 1989, 81–156Google Scholar, esp. pp. 142–3 (although I would argue that George's compilation included the patriarchate of Alexander to 715).

58 For Zacharias's career (as monk on Scetis, then bishop of Xois) see HP (Primitive) (Seybold edn, 131); HP (Vulgate) (Evetts edn, PO v. 46); Copto-Arabic synaxarium 21st Amchir (Basset edn, PO xi. 838–9). For hagiographies see Life of John the Little extant in Bohairic, Sahidic, Arabic and Syriac versions (Mikhail, M. S. A. and Vivian, T., The holy workshop of virtue: the Life of John the Little by Zacharias of Sakhā, Collegeville, Mn 2010Google Scholar; also the Arabic and Ethiopic versions of a lost Life of Abraham and George (unedited but described in Zanetti, U., ‘Le Dossier d'Abraham et Georges, moines de Scété’, in Jullien, F. and Pierre, M.-J. [eds], Monachismes d'Orient: images, échanges, influences: hommage à Antoine Guillaumont, Turnhout 2011, 227–338CrossRefGoogle Scholar). For homilies see On the ascent of our Lord to Jerusalem and On Jonah, ed. H. De Vis, in Homélies coptes de la Vaticane II, repr. Louvain 1990, 5–57, and the unedited On the holy family (extant in a number of Arabic manuscripts, but described in brief in Davis, S., ‘Ancient sources for the Coptic tradition’, in Gabra, G., Be thou there: the holy family's journey in Egypt, Cairo 2001, 133–62Google Scholar at p. 151).

59 See also the so-called Controversy of John, in which John iii debates a Jew and a Chalcedonian at the court of ‘Abd al-‘Azīz. This is edited (Coptic) in Evelyn-White, H. G., The monasteries of the Wadi ’n Natrûn, New York 1926–33, i. 171–5Google Scholar. There the editor also describes the Arabic versions, which are unedited but contained in BN, Paris, mss Ar. 215, 4881.

60 For Severan churches at Ḥulwān see HP (Primitive) (Seybold edn, 121, 129); HP (Vulgate) (Evetts edn, PO v. 24–5, 42); Mena, Life of Isaac 13 (Porcher edn, 368, 384); Ps.-Abū Ṣāliḥ, Churches and monasteries of Egypt, fo. 53a; Eutychius, Annals (Cheikho edn, 41). On Ḥulwān at large see Timm, S., Das christlich-koptische Ägypten in arabischer Zeit, Wiesbaden 1984–92, 1074–8Google Scholar; and for ‘Abd al-‘Azīz's wider building activities see Kubiak, W. B., ‘‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn Marwan and the early Islamic building activity and urbanism in Egypt’, Africana Bulletin xlii (1994), 7–19Google Scholar. On its palace complexes see Grossmann, P., Christliche Architektur in Ägypten, Leiden 2002, 417–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Grossmann identifies Palace A with the Severan patriarchal palace.

61 HP (Primitive) (Seybold 115); HP (Vulgate) (Evetts edn, PO v. 10, 12).

62 St Mark: HP (Primitive) (Seybold edn, 119); HP (Vulgate) (Evetts edn, PO v. 18); Angelion: Life of Isaac 12 (Porcher edn, 363).

63 Mena of Nikiu, Life of Isaac 12 (Porcher edn, 358–63).

64 Indications of tension between the regime of ‘Abd al-'Azīz and its Christian subjects are discussed in P. Booth, ‘Images of emperors and emirs in early Islamic Egypt’ (forthcoming). For the changing contexts under his successors see now J. Mabra, Princely authority in the early Marwānid state: the life of ‘Abd al-‘Azīz b. Marwān, Piscataway, NJ 2017, esp. pp. 119–59.

65 For the monenergist-monothelete crisis see M. Jankowiak, ‘Essai d'histoire politique du monothélisme à partir de la correspondance entre les empereurs byzantins, les patriarches de Constantinople et les papes de Rome’, unpubl. PhD diss. Paris–Warsaw 2009, and P. Booth, Crisis of empire: doctrine and dissent at the end of late antiquity, Berkeley, Ca 2014.

66 See especially the Acts of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, ed. R. Riedinger, Concilium universale Constantinopolitanum tertium, ACO ser. 2.2, Berlin 1990–2, ii. 594–600; HP (Primitive) (Seybold edn, 98–9); HP (Vulgate) (Evetts edn, PO i. 491–2).

67 See HP (Primitive) (Seybold edn, 101); HP (Vulgate) (Evetts edn, PO i. 497); P.Köln V 215 (as n. 1 above).

68 See Acts of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, i. 230, in which Macarius, patriarch of Antioch, recalls how his predecessor Macedonius, the Constantinopolitan patriarch Peter, and the Alexandrian topotērētēs Theodore (ὁ τοποτηρητὴς τῆς Ἀλεξανδρέων Θεόδωρος) condemned Maximus’ doctrine, along with other resident bishops and the Constantinopolitan senate. On this council see Jankowiak, Essai, 351–3, and Booth, Crisis of empire, 322–3.

69 On the situation in Syria see J. Tannous, ‘In search of monotheletism’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers lxviii (2014). 29–67. Tannous suggests that monenergism-monotheletism was a ‘regional orthodoxy’ amongst Syrian Chalcedonians at the time of the Sixth Council.

70 See Acts of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, i. 20; cf. Eutychius, Annals (Antiochene Recension) (Cheiko edn, ii. 35), calling the see of Alexandria vacant.

71 See Acts of the Quinisext, ed. H. Ohme and others, in Concilium Constantinopolitanum a. 691/2 in Trullo habitum, ser. 2.2.4, Berlin 2013, 62 (with the scholia at 10–11, calling Peter patriarch). I am grateful to Marek Jankowiak for the reference.

72 See Michael the Great, Chronicle 11.12, speaking of the Sixth Council.

73 The Council did not go unnoticed in Severan circles: see the garbled account of the monothelete crisis in HP (Primitive) (Seybold edn, 115–16), HP (Vulgate) (Evetts edn, PO v. 11), placed at the beginning of the account of John iii (681–9). See also MacCoull, L., ‘The paschal letter of Alexander ii, patriarch of Alexandria: a Greek defense of Coptic theology under Arab rule’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers xliv (1990), 27–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 HP (Primitive) (Seybold edn, 119), HP (Vulgate) (Evetts edn, PO v. 18–19). The Chalcedonian communities named are the اهل اغرو / اهل اغروة and the اهل اسخنطس / اهل سخيطس, i.e. the peoples of Agarwa and of Saḫīṭus/Asḫanṭus (?). Their identification is however unclear; cf. Timm, Das christlich-koptische Ägypten, 75–6, 2238–9.

75 See n. 6 above.

76 See Uthemann, Anastasios Sinaites, 188–210, on Hodegos i–ii. For the same sections see Richard, ‘Anastase le Sinaïte’, 39–41, who assigned them to his proposed second edition.

77 Cf. also Binggeli, Anastase le Sinaïte, ii. 344, and Uthemann, Anastasiso Sinaites, 210–12.

78 ‘Οὕτως ἐρωτήσατε αὐτοὺς καὶ ὑμεῖς καὶ οὕτως ἁρμόσασθε πρὸς αὐτοὺς κατὰ τὸν προκείμενον σκοπόν, τοὺς μὲν Ἰακωβίτας περὶ φύσεως, τοὺς δὲ Ἁρμασίτας περὶ θεανδρικῆς ἐνεργείας’: Hodegos xiii.6.19–20 (Uthemann edn, 231); ‘Ταῦτα καὶ πρὸς Ἁρμασίτας ἀπορητέον’: Hodegos xiii.9.91 (Uthemann edn, 251).

79 Doctrina partum, ed. F. Diekamp, in Doctrina patrum de incarnatione Verbi, Münster 1907, 271.

80 So ibid. pp. lxxix–lxxx. See also Richard, ‘Anastase le Sinaïte’, 30–2, and Uthemann, Anastasios Sinaites, 24–5.

81 See Acts of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, ii. 630; cf. the visit to Alexandria of Paul, archbishop of Crete, in December 655, as reported in Theodore of Paphos, Life of Spyridon xx, ed. P. van den Ven, in La Légende de saint Spyridon, évêque de Trimithonte, Louvain 1953, 89: ‘Παύλου τοῦ ἁγιωτάτου ἀρχιεπισκόπου Κρήτης κατὰ συγκυρίαν ἀπὸ Αἰγύπτου ἐν Κωνσταντινουπόλει ἀνερχομένου καὶ ἐκεῖ παρατυχόντος.’ It is tempting to connect this mission with the trial and condemnation of Maximus the Confessor at Constantinople in the same year – that is, it reported events and shored up the monenergist-monothelete credentials of the Chalcedonians at Alexandria.