The Hymns in the Coptic Liturgy of the White Monastery in Upper Egypt

One of the most important Coptic monuments preserved from the first millennium AD until today is the library of the so-called White Monastery in Sohag, Upper Egypt, also known as the Monastery of Apa Shenoute (ca. 361/62465 CE). The White Monastery library is highly important for Coptic studies due to its large quantity of Sahidic parchment and paper leaves (ca. 10,000), their literary richness and the variety of manuscripts dating back to the time between the 9th and 12th centuries, transmitting texts even from Apa Shenoutes era. Unfortunately, the manuscripts of the library are scattered in various collections in Europe, Africa and the USA. Their dispersal makes the science of codicology of particular importance to Coptic studies. The reconstruction of the manuscripts has been of high priority since the beginning of Coptology until now. With the exception of the lectionaries, the other liturgical sources from the White Monastery library have been mostly neglected. In the last decade, the situation changed significantly as a result of the FWF-P20143-G02 The Typika of the Monastery of Apa Shenoute. The present project is a follow-up to this work. The aim of the follow-up project is to identify, edit, translate and study the alphabetical acrostics as well as the hymns called poiekon and trisagion chanted in the liturgy of the White Monastery and furthermore to determine the liturgical codices, to which they belong. Moreover, the project will deal with the Sitz im Leben of these hymns within the Coptic liturgy as a whole and the tradition of the White Monastery in particular. Both the previous project and its follow-up concern the manuscripts from the White Monastery known as typika, which are liturgical codices, consisting of the parts (= libelli) for the priests assistants, such as deacons, cantors and lectors. Up to the present, there are at least eighteen such codices in a very fragmentary state. They contain many different libelli such as directories of pericopae, directories of hymns, a diaconikon as well as various lists. A few libelli can be designated as directories of hymns. The follow-up project will focus only on those of them which offer the entire text of various hymns for the cantor in Greek (alphabetical acrostics and trisagion hymns) and those in Greek with Coptic translation (poiekon hymns). According to the Corpus dei Manoscritti Copti Letterari (Tito Orlandi), the codices with liturgical typika of the White Monastery have the sigla MONB.AW and NP, as well as all letters from MONB.WA to WT. The sigla of the codices including acrostics, poiekon and trisagion hymns are MONB.NP, WA, WE, WL, WT. The approach to the liturgical sources in this project is from the codicological perspective of a Coptologist whose scholarly goal is to make the texts available for further investigation by other specialists in Coptic studies, mainly however by scholars of oriental liturgiology. The follow-up project will make a contribution to the study of the hymnography of the Coptic and the Byzantine traditions as a whole. It will help to explore, preserve and illuminate the manuscript heritage of the White Monastery as well as the Coptic liturgy celebrated there. The research institution is the Department of Biblical Studies and Ecclesiastical History at the Catholic Theological Faculty in close cooperation with the Center for the Studies of the Christian East, both institutions of the Paris-Lodron-University of Salzburg.