White Monastery - The Library

The Library

The literacy campaign, which Shenouda the Archimandrite waged in his monastery, reflected positively on the library of the monastery. With everyone in the monastery capable of reading and many skilled in the art of writing manuscripts, the library must have been one of the greatest libraries of Christian Egypt. This testimony is not only in the number of codices identified, but also in the wide variety of subjects it possessed.

Today the library is scattered all over the world. Codices were dismembered with individual folios ending up in different libraries or museums. At times, even an individual folio ended up in different libraries which were thousands of miles apart. Serious efforts has been done to artificially regroup these codices from their Diaspora with photographic means. Bishop Lefort of Louvain made the first comprehensive attempt toward achieving this monumental goal. However his collection was a tragic victim of World War II. Currently this task has been taken up by Prof. Tito Orlandi and his associates in the Sapienza University of Rome. There, they formed the Corpus dei Manoscritti Copti Letterari. They were able to identify hundreds of separate codices with the aid of the prior works that Coptic scholars had previously done.

The library contents, as mentioned above, has adorned many libraries and museums around the world from as early as the 19th century. The following is a partial list of those places that possess such fragments:

• Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
• Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek
• Cairo, Coptic Museum
• Cairo, Egyptian Museum
• Cairo, Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale
• Cambridge, Cambridge University Library
• Florence, Laurentian Library
• Saint Petersburg, Public Library
• London, British Library
• London, Eton College
• Louvain, Bibliothèque de l'Université
• Manchester, John Rylands University Library
• Michigan, University of Michigan Library
• Moscow, Pushkin Museum
• Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III
• New York, The Morgan Library & Museum
• Oxford, Bodleian Library
• Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France
• Paris, Musée du Louvre
• Strasbourg, Bibliothèque de l'Université
• Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica
• Venice, Biblioteca Naniana
• Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek

The ancient library of the White Monastery is rich in many categories such biblical, hagiographical, liturgical, etc. This provides the researcher with good knowledge about what the monks were reading and what they were allowed to read at different stages of the monastery development. However, the early times are not too well represented in the surviving fragments, This can be either attributed to their frequent use or simply they were victims of time and of decline of the monastery in later times. The dialect of these manuscripts were predominately in Sahidic Coptic, which was perfected in its literary form by Saint Shenouda the Archimandrite. There were also some bilingual manuscripts. The early ones were in Sahidic Coptic and Greek, while the latter ones had Sahidic Coptic and Arabic. The writing material employed were mostly parchment, because of its prevalence, but some of the later ones were found on paper.

The first Category, and most abundant, is the Biblical manuscripts. Nearly every book of the Old Testament, including the Deuterocanonical Books is represented. The only exception is some of the Historical books, which were always in short supply in Egyptian monasteries. The New Testament on the other hand is represented in its entirety though in a fragmentary shape.

A second category is the apocryphal Gospels, Acts, and Biblical lives that were frequently read in Egyptian Monasteries. These include the Gospel of the twelve apostles, Gospel of Saint Bartholomew, Acts of Saint Thomas, Acts of Pilate, Life of Virgin Mary, and Life of Joseph the Carpenter.

A third category is the historical manuscripts, which are rare in any of the Coptic libraries found thus far. However in the White Monastery one finds a substantial part of an ecclesiastical history manuscript. That manuscript deals with the history of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria in the 4th and 5th centuries. In addition, there are several fragments of codices that record the acts of the great Councils of Nicaea and Ephesus.

Another important category found in the library is the hagiographic texts. These are found in relative abundance in all monastic libraries, and the White Monastery is no exception. They are primarily intended for the spiritual edification of the monks rather than being accurate historical records of the saints. They include acts and related texts of many martyrs such as Saint Colluthus the Physician, Saints Cosmas and Damian, St. Philopater Mercurius, Saint Psote, Saint Theodore, Saint Victor, and many others. There are also the lives of many important saints of the Egyptian Church like Saint Anthony, Saint Athanasius, Saint Pachomius and his disciples, Saint Samuel the Confessor, and Saint Shenouda the Archimandrite to name just a few.

The richest and most significant category available is the writings of the fathers. This library has yielded a great number of manuscripts, preserving texts of the composition of Egyptian writers, as well as Coptic translation of Greek writings of Church Fathers. The most significant part of it is that of the remarkable works of Saint Shenouda the Archimandrite. Other writings includes those of Saint Wissa's sermons, the writings of Saint Pachomius and his disciples, and the Apophthgamata Patrum. Other texts of original Coptic composition include those of Constantine of Asyut, John of Burulus, and Rufus of Shotep. The group of Coptic translations of Greek writings includes those of Saint Peter of Alexandria, Saint Athanasius, Saint Theophilus, Saint Cyril the Great, and Saint Dioscorus. The Greek translations of non-Coptic Fathers include Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, Saint John Chrysostom, and Saint Severus of Antioch. Works of other authors are also found in that collection.