Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 7 August 2021
antony of egypt, saint: arabic life by serapion of thmuis
Lisa Agaiby Keywords: St. Antony, Athanasius, Serapion of Thmuis, Red Sea monasteries, manuscripts, St. Paul the Hermit, Wadi al-Natrun, Monastery of St. Antony, Monastery of St. Paul.
saint antony of egypt, or St. Antony the Great (c. 251–356), has been identified throughout the centuries as the “father of monks.” The Life of Antony attributed to athanasius of Alexandria was composed in Greek shortly after the saint’s death in 356 and is preserved in a number of manuscripts. Translations of the Life are extant in Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, Georgian, Slavonic, and Armenian (Draguet 1980; Gant 2008; Vivian and Athanassakis 2003; Witakowski 2015; Imnaišvili 1970; Otero 1979; Tayeci 1899). However, there is also a redacted Life of Antony that was composed in Arabic sometime in the thirteenth century and is attributed to serapion of tmuis, Antony’s confidant. This Arabic Life is preserved in at least 74 manuscripts; of which 21 are housed in the Red Sea monasteries of St. Antony and St. Paul. They date from the fourteenth to the twentieth centuries. The large number of manuscripts containing the “Pseudo-Serapionic” Life of Antony is a clear indicator of a sizable readership, and of sustained interest in the literary and scribal production of the text. The Life attributed to Serapion differs considerably from the Athanasian account due to the addition of numerous miraculous accounts and pious elaborations. Circumstantial evidence suggests that the Pseudo-Serapionic Life was composed sometime in the thirteenth century, and by the fourteenth century was incorporated in liturgical texts of the Coptic and Ethiopian Churches (Agaiby 2018: 49, 71–73).
The redacted account also made its way beyond Egypt through a translation into Latin by the Spanish Dominican Alphonse Bonhome in 1341, who found a copy of the Pseudo-Serapionic Life of Antony in the Coptic Monastery of St. Antony at Famagusta in Cyprus (Halkin 1946: 512; Agaiby 2018: 74). From as early as the eighth century in Egypt, hagiographical texts were susceptible to redactions (Papaconstantinou 2011: 333) and by the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, were the norm (Høgel 2002: 150–151). Redacting was often done to make the text more suitable for the current social, liturgical, linguistic, and political contexts and needs (Efthymiadis 2011: 163). In the Pseudo-Serapionic Life of Antony the emphasis and content of the original Athanasian account was transformed to make it more appealing and more familiar to contemporary Egyptians. Thus, the original scenes in the Athanasian Life of Antony’s encounters with martyrs, Arians, Melitians, and philosophers, no longer applicable in medieval Egypt, are replaced with scenes of demonic warfare described in military imagery that brings to mind the time of the Crusades, of Antony dealing with foreigners in Frankish countries, and of Antony interacting with locals such as the Patriarch of Alexandria, the Bishop of Miṣr, and those coming to him from the town of Aṭfīḥ near Giza (Agaiby 2018: 76–77). These aspects reflect textual data within the text pointing to a thirteenth-century composition.
Specifically: A colophon in the earliest extant manuscript of the Life contained at St. Paul the Hermit’s Monastery and catalogued as History 53 states that the © Claremont Graduate University 1 Lisa Agaiby, Saint Antony of Egypt: Arabic Life by Serapion of Thmuis 7 August 2021 monk Ghabriyāl from the Monastery of St. Antony copied the text “from an original” copy dated AD 1269; the earliest extant copto-arabic synaxarion, dated AD 1339/1340 and catalogued as MS Coptic Museum 139, provides an abridged version of the Athanasian Life together with two episodes from the Pseudo-Serapionic Life (Epiphanius 2014: 22–23); and finally the entry on Antony in the Ethiopic Synaxarion compiled sometime in the thirteenth century contains a lengthy account that incorporates a substantial amount of detail from the Pseudo-Serapionic Life (Budge 1928: 305–308).
The Redaction The Pseudo-Serapionic Life is based mainly on the Athanasian Life and is complemented by episodes from other sources including Jerome’s Life of Paul the Hermit (Deferrari 1964: 229), Palladius’s Lausiac History (Meyer 1964: 76–81), the Apophthegmata Patrum (Wortley 2014: 31), the History of the Patriarchs (Evetts 1904: 207–209), and the Coptic Life of St. Macarius the Great attributed to Serapion of Thmuis (Vivian 2004: 176–177). The composer introduces the Life with a rhetorical proemium to make the work panegyric in form. Overall, the redactor applied the following technique in composing his account: he embellished the original text; recycled secondary texts; and added new, unattested compositions. Accordingly, a new story required a transfer of authorship, and who more deserving than Serapion, “Antony’s beloved son” and confidant (Agaiby 2018: 93)? In Serapion one sees the combination of literature and visual conventions clearly apparent in both Red Sea monasteries that not only house the largest quantity of manuscripts containing a recension of the Pseudo-Serapionic Life but are the only monasteries in Egypt that have wall paintings depicting Serapion of Tmuis standing with Antony as well as paul the hermit (Lyster 2008a: 224; Agaiby 2018: 95–96).
Manuscripts Containing a Life of Antony in Arabic There are three different vitae of Antony in Arabic: (1) a translation of the Greek Life of Antony attributed to Athanasius (or its Sahidic version); (2) a redacted version attributed to Serapion of Tmuis; and (3) an abridged version of the Pseudo-Serapionic Life contained in the Bustān al-Ruhbān (Paradise of the Monks). To date, 87 manuscripts have been identified containing a Life of Antony in Arabic: 56 of them inside Egypt and 31 outside Egypt. Of all 87 manuscripts, thirteen contain a version of the Athanasian Life in which the incipits specifically name Athanasius as the author. Meanwhile, 74 manuscripts contain a recension of the Pseudo-Serapionic Life, of which six name the author as Serapion Bishop of Tmuis, and 68 have no attribution (Agaiby 2018: 50– 54).
The popularity of the Pseudo-Serapionic Life of Antony was not limited to the Red Sea monasteries, but extended throughout Egypt, including old cairo and Upper Egypt. The exception was the wadi al-natrun monasteries in which the Athanasian Life prevailed over the Pseudo-Serapionic. Up until the mid-twentieth century, the Pseudo-Serapionic Life was predominant in Egypt, especially in the Red Sea monasteries, and it was only from about 1950 © Claremont Graduate University 2 Lisa Agaiby, Saint Antony of Egypt: Arabic Life by Serapion of Thmuis 7 August 2021 onward that the Monastery of St. Antony began publishing books of the Life of Antony based on the Athanasian account (Agaiby 2018: 57–59). The literary “shift” that occurred in the mid-twentieth century, toward the Athanasian Life gaining prominence in Egypt, is reflected in iconography: icons that were written from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries—the time during which most of the manuscripts containing a recension of the Pseudo-Serapionic Life were transcribed—depict Antony holding a scroll upon which is inscribed the first sentence of his commandments to his disciples upon his deathbed contained in the Pseudo-Serapionic Life: “I ask you, my beloved sons … keep the commandments that I commanded of you” (e.g., Atalla 2000: 49, 50, 57, 59, 62, 63, 112).
But icons written from the twentieth century onward depict Antony holding a scroll upon which is inscribed the Bible verse he heard in the Athanasian Life: “If you want to be perfect, go, sell all your possessions and give to the poor, and come follow Me, and you will have treasure in heaven” (Matt. 19:21). And yet, while the Life of Antony attributed to Athanasius is today considered the authentic account in the Coptic Church, the Bustān, which continues being reprinted and read in monasteries throughout Egypt and the Coptic diaspora, still contains a few Pseudo-Serapionic elements (Epiphanius 2014).
An Overview of Antony in Coptic Liturgical Tradition Antony’s life story is recited publicly on his feast day that is celebrated in the Coptic Church on 22 Ṭūbah (30 January). In Coptic liturgical tradition, Antony is commemorated in several Coptic rites: the Offering of the Morning and Evening Incense (Moftah 1991: 1716–1718; Mattaʾūs 1998: 57), the rite of Glorifications (Youssef 2014: 62), and hymns such as doxology (Gabra 2009: 95), expositions, and psalis (Moftah 1991: 1726–1727). An abridged version of his Life is in the synaxarion (Coquin 1991: 2171–2190), as well as in the Antiphonarion (Mikhail 2014: 178) that is sung in the service of the psalmodia (Youssef 2014: 62) that follows the evening Office of Compline. The Pseudo-Serapionic Life not only gained renown in the Coptic Church as the authoritative text on Antony’s life, but also influenced liturgical rites and traditions. As recently as 1936, the exposition read out each Sunday evening in the Monastery of St. Antony, as well as on Antony’s feast day, closely resembled the storyline in the Pseudo-Serapionic Life. Today, the exposition in use reflects the Athanasian Life of Antony (Agaiby 2018: 23–45).
The position of the Life of Antony in a collection of texts quite often reflects the hierarchical order of saints according to Coptic liturgical tradition (Taft 1993: 251; King 2007: 417; Gabra 2008: 112). In the Coptic liturgy as well as in the Copto-Arabic glorification of saints, the order of primacy is as follows: in the first place the Virgin Mary, followed by the heavenly dominions, the apostles, the martyrs, and then the monks with Antony’s name always preceding the list of monastic fathers (Budde 2004: 484, 498). Likewise, the iconographic program in the nave of the ancient church at the Monastery of St. Antony begins with the martyrs at the western end and is completed to the east with rows of monastic saints where Antony is depicted first in a position of honor (Bolman 2002a: 50), followed by Paul the Hermit and then other fathers who were pioneers in developing methods of monastic living. In Arabic monastic hagiographic manuscripts housed at the Red Sea monasteries that contain a recension of the Life of Antony, © Claremont Graduate University 3 Lisa Agaiby, Saint Antony of Egypt: Arabic Life by Serapion of Thmuis 7 August 2021 Antony’s account is always in first place, followed by the Life of Paul the Hermit (Agaiby 2018: 16). In Coptic liturgical tradition, Antony always precedes Paul, but they are usually mentioned and depicted together (Davis 2008: 30).
The pairing of the Lives of Antony and Paul in the manuscripts reveals the close association between liturgy, literature, and iconography.