- The life and services of Daniel, priest of Shiheat,
and of the monks under him.
A. 345. In the ensuing decades, the story of the
Copts was one of fluctuating fortunes, depending on the
attitude of the eastern emperors towards them and the
extent of sympathy and understanding – or total lack of
them – that these Emperors displayed towards the Church
of Alexandria and its spiritual Heads. For a period of
almost one hundred and fifty years under the nine
Emperors that ruled Egypt up to the Arab Conquest, there
were times of peace and times of oppression in the land of
the Nile. In peace times, the people prospered, the
Church flourished and its Popes had scope to carry on
their constructive duties of building, teaching, writing and
sustaining the faithful. In times of war, the people were
subjected to all kinds of oppression and persecution and
suffered untold hardships – a situation that was not
unfamiliar to them.
But whether they were left in peace or not, and
whatever the nature or severity of the hardships they
suffered, the Copts in general remained fiercely attached
to their own Orthodox Faith and unshakeably loyal to
their own elected Patriarchs and none other. No outside
ruler, or his imposed governor or minion patriarch, with
all the might and power at their command, could break
their spirit or sway them from this loyalty. Even when
they got bruised and battered, it must be said to their
eternal credit that they did not bow their heads. And that
is how and why the line of succession of their own Popes
was never broken from the time of St. Mark to the
present, even in their darkest hour.