History of Egypt From 330 B.C. To the Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12)Rappoport, A. S. (Angelo Solomon)
History
History of Egypt From 330 B.C. To the Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12)
Rappoport, A. S. (Angelo Solomon)
Egypt -- History
In thus condemning the faith of Eutyches, the Greeks were
excommunicating the whole of Egypt. The Egyptian belief in the one
nature of Christ, which soon afterwards took the name of the Jacobite
faith from one of its popular supporters, might perhaps be distinguished
by the microscopic eye of the controversialist from the faith of
Eutyches; but they equally fell under the condemnation of the council of
Chalcedon. Egypt was no longer divided in its religious opinions. There
had been a party who, though Egyptian in blood, held the Arian and
half-Arian opinions of the Greeks, but that party had ceased to exist.
Their religion had pulled one way and their political feelings another;
the latter were found the stronger, as being more closely rooted to the
soil; and their religious opinions had by this time fitted themselves
to the geographical boundaries of the country. Hence the decrees of
the council of Chalcedon were rejected by the whole of Egypt; and the
quarrel between the Chalcedonian and Jacobite party, like the former
quarrel between the Athanasians and the Arians, was little more than
another name for the unwillingness of the Egyptians to be governed by
Constantinople.
Proterius, the new bishop, entered Alexandria supported by the prefect
Floras at the head of the troops.
But this was the signal for a revolt of the Egyptians, who overpowered
the cohort with darts and stones; and the magistrates were driven to
save their lives in the celebrated temple of Serapis. But they found no
safety there; the mob surrounded the building and set fire to it, and
burned alive the Greek magistrates and friends of the new bishop; and
the city remained in the power of the rebellious Egyptians. When the
news of this rising reached Constantinople the emperor sent to Egypt a
further force of two thousand men, who stormed Alexandria and sacked it
like a conquered city, and established Proterius in the bishopric. As a
punishment upon the city for its rebellion, the prefect stopped for some
time the public games and the allowance of grain to the citizens, and
only restored them after the return to peace and good order.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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