The Monastic Centre

The afterlife of Scetis as an institution: the four great congregations, each with its own church, that organized around the desert fathers near the end of the fourth century; the barbarian raids of the fifth and sixth centuries that repeatedly devastated and dispersed the valley; and the Monastery of St. Macarius, Deir Abu Maqar, which survived all of it, was revived in the twentieth century, and guards the relics venerated as the saint’s.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)

The Four Churches of Scetis

In Macarius’s lifetime, Scetis was a loose scatter of cells gathered for the weekend synaxis (see Founding of Scetis). By the time of his death (c. 391) and in the decades just after, the settlement had organized itself into four distinct congregations, each clustered around its own central church and named for a great father (the standard account is Evelyn-White, The Monasteries of the Wâdi ’n Natrûn, 1926–1933; cf. The Coptic Encyclopedia, “Scetis”). The four were:

Baramus (Dayr al-Baramus / the Monastery of the Romans) — by tradition the oldest, associated with the memory of Maximus and Domitius, the “Roman” disciples.
St. Macarius (Dayr Anba Maqar / Deir Abu Maqar) — the congregation that grew up around the cell and tomb of Macarius the Great himself, the spiritual center of the valley.
St. Bishoi (Dayr Anba Bishoi) — named for the great ascetic Pishoi (Bishoi), a younger contemporary in the Scetiote tradition.
St. John the Short (named for John Colobos, “the Short,” another of the celebrated Scetiote fathers) — the only one of the original four not to survive into the present day.

[A clarification carried over from Section 02: this set of four churches within Scetis is the proper referent of “the four” in the Macarian dossier. It should not be confused with the three desert centers of Lower Egypt — Nitria, Kellia, and Scetis (see The Desert Fellowship). Nor are the four original congregations identical with the four monasteries inhabited at Wadi al-Natrun today: the present-day Syrian Monastery, Deir al-Suryan, is a later medieval foundation and was not one of the original four.]

The Sackings and Dispersions

Scetis lay deep in the open desert, far from the protection of the settled land, and its very remoteness — the attraction that had drawn Macarius — left it exposed to the nomadic raiders of the Western Desert, the Mazices (Berber tribes). Across the fifth and sixth centuries the valley was sacked repeatedly, and each devastation scattered its monks (Evelyn-White, The Monasteries of the Wâdi ’n Natrûn, 1926–1933; cf. The Coptic Encyclopedia):

c. 407/408 — the first great raid, in which monks were killed and the fathers dispersed; the celebrated Moses the Black is remembered as having been martyred in this attack, and John the Short and Pishoi fled the valley.
c. 434 — a second devastation.
c. 444 — the most severe, remembered in the Coptic tradition for the Forty-Nine Martyrs of Scetis, the monks who chose to remain and were killed rather than flee.

Further raids continued into the sixth century. The pattern — devastation, flight, and patient return and rebuilding — became part of the rhythm of Scetiote history, and it ended the valley’s first “golden age” of the great fathers. Yet the monastic life always returned; the cells were rebuilt, the churches restored, and the memory of Macarius held the place together through every dispersion.

The Monastery of St. Macarius Today

Of the four original congregations, the Monastery of St. Macarius — Deir Abu Maqar — endured most continuously and remains the spiritual heart of Wadi al-Natrun. Its foundation is traditionally placed in the mid-fourth century, around the cell and burial-place of the saint, though the monastery’s own tradition acknowledges that the exact date cannot be fixed. Through fourteen centuries of raids, decline, and renewal it preserved an unbroken monastic presence, and it became one of the most important houses of the Coptic Orthodox Church, closely bound to the patriarchate (a number of Coptic patriarchs have come from or been consecrated in connection with the Wadi al-Natrun monasteries).

In the twentieth century the monastery underwent a celebrated revival. In 1969, under Pope Cyril VI, a small group of monks — twelve, led by Father Matta el-Meskeen (Matthew the Poor) — was sent to the then-depleted Deir Abu Maqar, and under Matthew’s leadership the house grew into one of the largest and most influential monastic communities in the modern Coptic Church, a center of patristic study, manuscript work, and spiritual renewal. The revival of Deir Abu Maqar is one of the signal events of modern Coptic monasticism (see The Coptic Inheritance).

The Relics

The monastery guards relics venerated as those of Macarius the Great. The Coptic tradition holds that it possesses the relics of the “three Macarii” — Macarius the Egyptian (the Great), Macarius of Alexandria, and Macarius the Bishop of Tkow — enshrined together in the Church of St. Macarius (so the monastery’s own tradition; cf. The Coptic Encyclopedia, “Dayr Anba Maqar”). [The grouping of the relics of “three Macarii” is itself a sign of how closely the several saints named Macarius were associated in the tradition; the claim is reported here as the monastery’s veneration, in keeping with METHODOLOGY §3.5, and the relics of Macarius the Great are the object of the saint’s cult treated in Veneration.] In the course of twentieth-century restoration the monastery also reported the discovery, beneath the Church of St. Macarius, of relics identified by the Coptic tradition as those of St. John the Baptist and the Prophet Elisha — a claim that belongs to the monastery’s own tradition and is noted here as such.

Continuity

The deepest fact about the monastic center Macarius founded is its continuity. The valley he chose for its remoteness has been a place of monastic prayer, with interruptions, from the 330s to the present day — through the Mazices raids, the Arab conquest, centuries of decline, and the modern revival. The semi-anchoritic life he established, the rhythm of cell and synaxis, is in essence still the life of Wadi al-Natrun’s monasteries. Few institutions in Christian history can claim so long an unbroken descent from a single founder; the survival of Deir Abu Maqar is the most tangible monument of Macarius the Great.

References

Evelyn-White, Hugh G. The Monasteries of the Wâdi ’n Natrûn. 3 vols. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1926–1933. (The four congregations; the Mazices raids; the history of Deir Abu Maqar.)
The Coptic Encyclopedia. Ed. Aziz S. Atiya. New York: Macmillan, 1991. (Articles “Scetis,” “Dayr Anba Maqar,” “Forty-Nine Martyrs of Scetis.”)
Chitty, Derwas J. The Desert a City. Oxford: Blackwell, 1966. (Scetis after the great fathers; the raids and dispersions.)
Matta el-Meskeen (Matthew the Poor). The Communion of Love and the publications of the Monastery of St. Macarius. (On the 1969 revival.)