THE COPTIC CHURCH

The Coptic Church has its foundation with its modern apostolic see in Alexandria, founded by St. Mark, who is said to be the disciple of St. Peter, sometime around the year 42 AD. It has maintained a distinctively Egyptian style of Christianity, which has been maintained despite the various political challenges posed to the church. The Coptic community were involved in the schism subsequent to the Council of Chalcedon in 451, resulting in ecclesiastical separation for the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic churches. In 639 AD, Egypt was captured by the Arab Caliphate, and since that time the Copts of Egypt have found themselves as a minority in their own homeland. Since that time, the See of Alexandria has been the mother church to other neighboring Christian faiths, including the Nubian and Ethiopian churches. The Coptic language, the old surviving descendant of the ancient Egyptian tongue, has also survived in the divine liturgies of the Coptic church. Many of the texts from antiquity which have survived to the present day have done so because of the care and conservation of the Coptic church and its sentinel monastic tradition.