Coptic Pilgrimages To Jerusalem, Relationship between the Coptic church and the Latin church

[yaoifunboi]

Setting: Historical fantasy (based on the real world, but magic works and my Copts have cat ears and tails due to their ancestor's reverence for cats) set in the Early Middle Ages. The novel I'm currently prewriting will be set in Germany and Scandianvia. It follows the kidnapping of a young, half-Coptic squire by vikings, and his father's quest to

Comments

[corivax]

I have absolutely no idea about your questions, but this sounds like an awesome story.

[yaoifunboi]

Thanks

[orange_fell]

I Google searched and found in a book result that Copts are mentioned as pilgrims to Jerusalem in a letter from the caliph Umar (Omar) written circa 637 CE, but "[f]rom the on, there are not many references to Coptic monks in or Coptic pilgrims to Jerusalem prior to the Crusades in the eleventh century." That's from Otto Friedrich August Meinardus, Two Thousand Years of Coptic History, Cairo, American University in Cairo Press, 2002, p. 137. So it seems like Coptic pilgrimage was fairly rare

[orange_fell]

*your shepherd's father

I meant, your shepherd, your main character's father.

Also, part of your problem Google searching might be really outdated terms and spellings. Oriental Orthodox? Moslem? More current are "Eastern Orthodox" and "Muslim."

[dustthouart]

No, Oriental Orthodox is 100% correct. The Oriental Orthodox are NOT the Eastern Orthodox. These are the English terms most commonly used today to differentiate between Orthodox Churches that accept or reject the Council of Chalcedon.

They would be considered Christians, certainly. Just heretics and schismatics. You can be a heretic and still be considered Christian. See the New Advent Encyclopedia for the Catholic view on such things. However it's possible that common people wouldn't get that--or perhaps would accuse a Copt (if there's cat ears, I assume they can be visibly identified as being such and nothing else) of being a Muslim (or Mohammedean, they would probably say at the time

[orange_fell]

I said they wouldn't be considered proper Christians by Europeans, not that they wouldn't be considered Christians at all. But it looks like I messed up about the term "Oriental Orthodox," thanks for the information.

[murstein]

In the 800s, Germany was probably less settled than you're imagining. Until the Frankish War (772 - 804), the big difference between Saxons and Vikings was whether they rode steeds into battle, or rode the sea-steed along the whale-road into battle. They worshiped the same gods, had pretty much the same economy (a little more wheat in Germany, a little more fish in Scandinavia), and spoke languages that differed only a little more than American, British, Indian and Australian English.

Not long after Charlemagne's death (814), the Frankish empire split into pieces (817), which fought each other more often than they cooperated. From 861 until his death in 876, Louis the German's part was racked by civil war.

Of course, if you choose to site your tale in England, it might be easier to find historical reference works in modern English! Don't forget that, at the time England was 9 different countriesOn the pilgrimage: The position of the Catholic Church, from about 325 on, was that everyone who wasn't Catholic was either a heretic or a

[dustthouart]

Yes, the Coptic Orthodox would be seen as heretics (and they would see the Catholics/Eastern Orthodox as heretics). Because the Coptic Orthodox rejected Chalcedon in 451 as you said.

To be perfectly blunt, Monophysitism (or Miaphysitism as they prefer to call it) is still called a heresy by the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. It's just we don't find it quite, erm, ecumenical to say "ZOMG U HERETICS" anymore, lol. But... yeah, we actually still believe they're heretics. (I'm a Roman Catholic.)

You can read the articles in the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia (published in IIRC 1911) such as this one, which will not only give you some historical information, but also the traditional Catholic view of same. Such as this paragraph:The Saracen domination, so gladly welcomed by the Jacobites, proved to them more of a curse than a blessing. They suffered many bitter persecutions under successive Moslem rulers. Many among the clergy and laity apostatized. Nor did the Melchites escape. Indeed they were worse off, ground as they were

[yaoifunboi]

I think what I'm going to do is write a short story about how Sarby the Coptic shepherd and Prince Rikard meet. When they get back to Francia, or somewhere along the way, a monk (the only sort of person likely to actually have much theological training in the Early Medieval period) informs them that the Copts are heritics. Anyone have an idea of someone famous from around that era they could meet? Rikard and Sarby both do a doubletake, and Sarby swears that he bielieves and has always believed the definition of the Council of Chalcedon, without knowing what he's swearing at all, and thus 'converts' without knowing it. Sound plausible?

[napoleonofnerds]

No - he'd have to convert formally, in front of a bishop or priest, in a church, the proper way.

[transemacabre]

Where did you get the name Sarby? Is it short for Sarabamun? If you'd like a list of Coptic names, there's an excellent one in Two thousand years of Coptic Christianity (American Univ in Cairo Press, 2002) by Otto Friedrich August Meinardus that includes notes on which language/culture the name was adopted from. Here's a few names off that list:

Abadir (Coptic-Pharaonic): Apater.
Girgis (Greek): George
Hanna (Hebrew-Aramaic): John
Ilya (Hebrew-Aramaic): Elijah
Luqa (Coptic-Latin): Luke
Matta (Hebrew): Matthew
Mitri (Greek): Demetrios
Qaysar (Coptic-Latin): Caesar
Rufayil (Hebrew): Raphael
Sarabamun (Coptic-Pharaonic): Serapis Amon
Sharubim (Hebrew): Seraphim

The Copts also used A LOT of Arabic names, such as Malak (angel), Gad (generous), and even names like Fath Allah (triumph of God) and Ata Allah (gift of god) that you might assume would be Muslim names. I had trouble finding attestation for Coptic women's names from this period; the closest I could come was a very few names mentioned in Women of Jeme: lives in a Coptic town in

[ricardienne]

b. Keep in mind that a typical priest would probably not be vastly more theologically educated than a typical laymen. And the farther you are from religious centers, the more likely that the local practices of Christians would be quite shocking to an orthodox Latin theologian. At the time of the Reformation, Lutheran clergy were evidently horrified by the amount of "Pagan" practice that was happening alongside Christianity in smaller villages.

Your Copt might be expected to adapt to Latin-rite liturgy and practices (but if he is somewhere in the middle of Germany, it could be pretty different from what we now consider to (have) be(en) orthodox), but it seems to me that the cat ears and tail would be more likely to cause him problems (unless humans with animal characteristics are common throughout your world?)

[yaoifunboi]

That's something I haven't thought of, actually. And people with animal ears aren't common in Western Europe at all. Of course, in his own domains, Sarby is known as the count, and respected- in fact he is thought of as a paragon of chivalry. But of course, outside of his domains, it would be "burn the demon" time!

[napoleonofnerds]

By the 800s proper seminaries had proliferated on the continent, so many priests would have advanced theological training.