sourced story
451 CEReputable source · 2 sourcesWell documented

The Council of Chalcedon Splits Off the Coptic Church

A dispute over the nature of Christ leaves Egypt with its own church and its own pope

On the timeline · around 451 CE · Ptolemaic, Roman, and Byzantine EgyptPtolemaic, Roman, and Byzantine EgyptIslamic EgyptThe Council of Chalcedon Splits Off the Coptic Church200 CE300 CE400 CE500 CE600 CE700 CE

Quick facts

Council convened
451 CE, by Emperor Marcian
Egyptian position
Rejected the two-natures formula; labeled monophysite
Result
Independent Coptic Church of Egypt with its own pope
Egyptian monastic founders
Saint Anthony (hermit) and Saint Pachomius (communal)

What happened

By the fourth century Egypt had become a stronghold of Christianity, and the deserts along the Nile had given rise to the earliest organized Christian monasticism. Saint Anthony of Egypt, a hermit who withdrew into the eastern desert around 285 CE, became a model for thousands of monks, and Saint Pachomius organized the first communal monasteries on an island in the Upper Nile, a system that spread from Egypt to Palestine, Syria, and eventually Europe. In 451 CE the Roman emperor Marcian convened the Council of Chalcedon to settle a long-running argument over how to describe the divine and human natures of Christ. The bishops of Alexandria rejected the council's formula and were branded monophysites, meaning believers in one nature, and thus heretics. Rather than submit, the Alexandrians broke from both Constantinople and Rome and formed the independent Coptic Christian Church of Egypt under their own pope, a separation that has lasted to the present day.

Why it matters

The Chalcedon split gave Egypt a national church distinct from the Greek and Latin Christian mainstream, and the Copts who founded it remain the largest Christian community in the Middle East today. The Egyptian desert monasticism that preceded the split shaped the entire later Christian monastic tradition, east and west, making Egypt the birthplace of a form of religious life that spread across the Christian world.

How we know

The Council of Chalcedon and its rejection by the Alexandrian church are documented in the World History Encyclopedia's account of the council and its consequences for Egypt, and the Egyptian origins of Christian monasticism under Saint Anthony and Saint Pachomius are documented in the World History Encyclopedia's separate history of the monastic movement.

Sources

See something wrong? . Corrections with a source get fixed fastest.

Part of a timelineHistory of Egypt24 events · A country ruled from Rome, Damascus, Baghdad, Istanbul, London, and finally itself again, and a river that outlasted every one of themView all →