Its monophysite character is proved from the mention of the heresiarch Severus three times, i.e. on the 26th April (festum Severi), on the 4th September, and on the 1st December. It has no feast of St Peter and St Paul on the 29th June, but only a Planctus Pauli on the 18th March. The following points are worthy of notice:—25th March is the day of the Crucifixion, the 28th May is kept as the Inventio ossium S. Lucæ and the 6th March as the Manifestatio Crucis, where the later calendar adds, per Heraclium imperatorem. We have the beginnings of the Egyptian custom of commemorating the Mother of God on the 21st of each month, i.e. on the 21st Payni and the 21st Phaophi. The festum Dominæ on the 2nd August is certainly a feast of our Lady, but the festum Mirjam on the 22nd July is probably a festival of St Mary Magdalen. There are many things in this document the meaning of which can only be surmised.
A welcome addition to our knowledge of liturgical matters among the Copts exists in a calendar of the ninth century in the Vatican library; it is found along with a Coptic Evangeliarium in a codex written in 1328. The document is described and translated into Latin by A. Mai in the fourth volume of his Nova Collectio.[791] The date is determined by the fact that the Patriarch Amba Zacharias, who is entered as a saint in the later Synaxarium on the 13th Athyr,[792] does not appear in the calendar; he was patriarch, according to Le Quien from 1005 to 1032. The last Jacobite patriarchs mentioned are those who succeeded one another from Alexander to Michael (Chail). Michael was succeeded by John, after a vacancy of ten years, who ruled from 766-799.[793] Accordingly this calendar belongs to the ninth century. A striking peculiarity in it is that the Manifestatio Crucis is on the 17th-19th September instead of the 14th as in all other calendars.
The circumstance that several saints, instead of having one commemoration, have several, may give rise to confusion. St Thecla appears no less than five times, twice with the title martyr (on the 25th February and the 10th September), once as apostola (on the 12th July), on the 6th May and 3rd December she has no title. Although there was a second St Thecla, still this would not altogether explain the entries. Then James the son of Zebedee is mentioned on the 28th and 30th of April, as well as James the Lord’s brother on the 12th July and 23rd October. St Michael the Archangel occurs eight times. Our Lady’s Nativity is celebrated on both the 26th April and the 7th September. No importance is to be attached to these repetitions; they are purely arbitrary, and are due to the desire to provide a name for every day in the calendar, and to fill up vacant places.[794] This appears especially from the circumstance that on the 29th of every Egyptian month, corresponding to the 25th in the Julian Calendar, a commemoration of Christ’s Nativity is given, and on the 21st of each month a feast of our Lady (Commemoratio Dominæ S. Mariæ). The Death and Assumption of our Lady is placed on the 16th January. St Joseph the Carpenter has his commemoration on the 20th July. Fides, Spes, and Charitas appear as three martyrs under Hadrian on the 25th January; they are said to be daughters of a reported Sophia. No St Catherine appears either in this calendar or in the later Synaxarium but the heretic Severus († 539) is twice commemorated: on the 29th September (Adventus Severi Patrarchæ in Ægyptum) and on the 8th February, when he died.
Coptic calendars of a later date are still richer in names, but are full of legends and absurdities which show the steady decline of culture among the sect under Mahometan rule. This is especially the case with the Synaxarium or collection of legends compiled from ancient sources by Bishop Amba Michael of Atriba and Malidsch at the end of the fourteenth century.[795] The basis of the collection is an older work of the same kind composed sometime about the year 1090 (see 3rd Athyr).[796] Information concerning the saints who lived in monasteries was taken by Bishop Michael from a so-called “Guide,” used by both the Egyptian Copts and Melchites.[797] A “Guide” of this kind had been written especially for Alexandria by Bishop Amba John of Kift. Michael refers in his work to the years 1382 and 1387 (see 7th Bermahat and 19th Bermuda), and so must have lived in the fourteenth century.
As the work contains much information drawn from the ecclesiastical histories of the Copts and Abyssinians, it has been translated and much used in spite of its faulty character. It affords many useful particulars concerning the traditions and feasts of the Egyptian Church, and on this account Stephen Assemani undertook to make an abstract of the whole work which is printed in the fourth volume of Mai’s Nova Collectio. F. Wüstenfeld made a translation of the first part containing the first half of the Egyptian year, from September to February; the second half, from March to August including the intercalary days, is unfortunately still untranslated.
7. The Menology of Constantinople (Eighth Century)
The Eastern Church possesses a calendar of Saints belonging to the eighth century, which occupies an intermediate position between a merely Eastern Calendar, and one that is universal. Its title runs, Calendar of the Gospels for Festivals (μηνολόγιον τῶν εὐαγγελίων ἑορταστικῶν), for it gives the passage from the Gospels to be read on each day; it contains a considerable number of saints belonging to the East, though the days are far from being all occupied. March and April have remarkably few feasts; this is owing to the ancient, but even then obsolete injunction of the Trullan Council that the feasts of no martyrs were to be kept in Lent.
Several circumstances prove that Constantinople was the locality where this document originated and was in use. Certain quarters of the city, as for example, Blachernæ and Chalcoprateia, are mentioned; the 11th May is mentioned as the day of the city’s foundation; so too is the earthquake which threw down the city walls on the 24th September 557. A large number of the patriarchs of Constantinople are included, twenty-nine in all, beginning with Metrophanes (4th June 305-325) and ending with Paul who was patriarch from September 686 to the 2nd September 693. The absence of the twenty-one reputed bishops from St Andrew to Metrophanes suggests the thought that when this document was drawn up this invention had not been accepted.
Morcelli maintains that the Paul the younger mentioned on the 2nd September is the Patriarch Paul II., under whom the Trullan Council was held in 692, but he would, however, exonerate him from participation in the schismatic council, since he opposed it at a later date; this, however, contradicts the accepted chronology. No patriarch, not even Germanus, and none of the many martyrs and confessors belonging to the time of the Iconoclastic controversy under Leo the Isaurian and Constantine Copronymus, are mentioned. From this one concludes that the menology was composed immediately after the cessation of the first Iconoclastic controversy, at a date when the judgment on the sanctity of these personages had not yet been concluded, or when people were unwilling to revive the painful recollections which their name evoked.
The martyrs, confessors, and doctors of the Eastern Church are there in long array, at least all the celebrated ones, not only those belonging to all four patriarchates, but also those belonging to other countries, such as Anastasius the Persian († 628, on the 22nd January). The popes and saints of the West are excluded with the exception of the three martyrs Lawrence, Gervasius, and Protasius.