08 — Scetis after Macarius
What became of the settlement Macarius founded. The four monastic congregations that organized themselves at Scetis, the repeated sackings that dispersed the monks, and the survival of the Monastery of St. Macarius (Deir Abu Maqar) into the present — and the wider Coptic Orthodox inheritance of which Macarius is a founding father.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)
Macarius’s deepest historical legacy is institutional as well as spiritual: he founded a monastic center that has been continuously inhabited, with interruptions, for some seventeen centuries. The first file traces the post-Macarian history of Scetis itself — the four great congregations, each with its own church, that took shape around the fathers near the end of the fourth century; the devastating raids of the fifth and sixth centuries that repeatedly emptied and refilled the valley; and the Monastery of St. Macarius, Deir Abu Maqar, which still stands in Wadi al-Natrun, was revived in the twentieth century, and guards relics venerated as the saint’s. The second file widens the lens to the Coptic Orthodox inheritance: Macarius’s place as a father of Coptic monasticism, the cult that surrounds him in the Coptic Church, and the living continuity between his desert and the Coptic Christianity of today.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Monastic Centre | The four churches of Scetis; the sackings and dispersions; the Monastery of St. Macarius (Deir Abu Maqar) and its twentieth-century revival. |
| The Coptic Inheritance | Macarius as a father of Coptic monasticism; the Coptic cult; the living continuity of the inheritance. |
See Also
- Founding of Scetis — the settlement whose later history this section traces
- The Desert Fellowship — the “four” congregations vs. the three desert centers
- Veneration — the feast, relics, and cult East and Coptic
- Attested Accounts — the Coptic hagiographic tradition
References
- Evelyn-White, Hugh G. The Monasteries of the Wâdi ’n Natrûn, 3 vols. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1926–1933. (The standard history of the Scetis monasteries.)
- The Coptic Encyclopedia. Ed. Aziz S. Atiya. New York: Macmillan, 1991. (Articles “Scetis,” “Dayr Anba Maqar.”)
- Chitty, Derwas J. The Desert a City. Oxford: Blackwell, 1966.