New Evidence about the Fall of Patriarch Macedonius of Constantinople (511 CE) from a Coptic Ostrakon

Abstract

What is the value of the study of Coptic literature? This question may seem a bit odd to ask in a journal devoted to Coptic studies. On the other hand, precisely in this context it is perhaps worthwhile to ask such a fundamental question. When we think of Coptic literature, the author that first springs to mind is no doubt Shenoute of Atripe, the charismatic abbot of the so-called “White Monastery” and most important author of original literary works in Coptic.1 Or we may mention the Manichaean and Gnostic works that have come down to us through finds such as those at Medinet Madi and Nag Hammadi, which have given us an idea of the diversity of Egyptian Christianity in the first centuries CE. Some of the writings preserved in the Nag Hammadi codices are perhaps less “Egyptian” than we might think at first sight, however, they probably reflect a more widespread phenomenon of literary works circulating among Judaeo-Christian groups in the Eastern Roman Empire.