Coptic Hagiography

The Life of Aaron is one of the most interesting and sophisticated hagiographical works surviving in Coptic. The work contains descriptions of the lives of ascetic monks, in particular Apa Aaron, on the southern Egyptian frontier in the fourth and early fifth centuries, and was probably written in the sixth century. Even though the first edition of this work was already published by E.A. Wallis Budge in 1915, a critical edition remained outstanding. In this book Jitse H.F. Dijkstra and Jacques van der Vliet present not only a critical text, for the most part based on the only completely preserved, tenth-century manuscript, but also a new translation and an exhaustive commentary addressing philological, literary and historical aspects of the text.

В статье обсуждается одна из характерных особенностей коптского агиографического предания о Диоклетиане — его особая связь с Аполлоном. Анализ ее позволяет признать,
что в основу этого представления легли два разных события, связанные со святилищем Аполлона в Дафне близ Антиохии. Во-первых, роль оракула в решении Диоклетиана начать гонения против христиан и, во-вторых, история перенесения мощей свщмч. Вавилы и пожара в этом святилище при Юлиане Отступнике. Этот факт расширяет круг источников, с которыми были знакомы и которые перерабатывали в своих целях коптские авторы, он позволяет включить в их число помимо церковных историков Евсевия, Лактанция и Иоанна Малалы, гомилии Иоанна Златоуста и Севира Антиохийского.

The reconstruction of the Coptic tradition related to the monk Onophrius: a crucial case of integration of literary, archaeological and documentary sources. Known aspects and open questions.

The Coptic version of the Vita Onuphrii, transmitted by three semi-complete codices and the fragments of other three manuscripts, makes of Onophrius a well-known monastic figure, whose itinerant adventures are preserved
by an unusually large number of witnesses, testifying to the fortune
of both the wandering monk and the work related to him.
The Vita Onuphrii belongs to the literary genre of the historiae monachorum, since the episode regarding our saint does not constitute an independent
biographic narration – as it happens in some Greek recensions
and in the Ethiopic tradition – but it is part of a travel narrative, where several other characters are described by the supposed author, Papnoute.
Despite the fact that this work has been the object of several studies, even very recently, there are good reasons to reanalyze it once more.
Combining all the available sources – documentary, literary, archaeological, and even oral – this paper aims therefore to shed light on those aspects that have been neglected, such as the worship places related to the saint, the way in which an historia monachorum become the “Life of Onophrius”,
and the reason of the fortune of his cult till the eleventh century.

Przekład ze wstępem i komentarzem kolekcji cudów św. Menasa zachowanej w pergaminowym kodeksie M.590, przechowywanym w Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum (CLM 221; P.MorganLib. 125).

Lin to the full content of the Vox Patrum volume:
https://czasopisma.kul.pl/index.php/vp/issue/view/417