Edition and Translation of the Arabic Synaxarium for the Twelve Months of the Coptic Year Based on the Oldest Surviving Manuscripts

Basic data for this project

Description

The Synaxarium is, alongside the Difnar, the central liturgical book of the Coptic (Egyptian) Church. Still today, the Synaxarium’s texts have a firm place in the worship services of the Copts, who are one of the largest Christian communities of the Orient. By this means, in accord with a long tradition, the Copts commemorate such persons as saints, martyrs, apostles, etc. on the one hand, but on the other hand also important events in the history of the Coptic Church and in the biblical tradition. Local saints appear here alongside well known persons who are universally revered as saints in the Christian tradition: biblical figures such as Jesus, Mary, or the apostles, as well as significant historical personalities like the Emperor Constantine. In this respect, the Synaxarium clearly displays characteristics of a compendium, whose origin is believed to belong in the early part of the thirteenth century, but which underwent revision in the course of time. As a hagiographical source, the Synaxarium is today of inestimable value, especially as a supplement to or substitute for early martyrs’ legends that no longer survive, neither in Coptic nor in Arabic, and from which the compilers of the Synaxarium drew some of their material. The goal of the project is to produce a new edition of the Arabic text of the Synaxarium for the twelve months of the Coptic liturgical year, from Tūt through Misrā plus Nasī, on the basis of the oldest surviving manuscripts that contain the Lower Egyptian recension, and by this means to fill a gap in the scientific investigation of this work. As the basis for the edition, I will use a manuscript from the fourteenth century (now in the Coptic Museum in Cairo), and in an apparatus I will collate ten additional manuscripts (five from the fourteenth und fifteenth centuries, four from the eighteenth century, and one from the beginning of the nineteenth century), as well as several fragments said to date from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; most of these manuscripts have not yet been published in any form. The edition is planned to be an online publication, at least to begin with. A German translation based on the Arabic text will be published in printed form.