Saint Mary Deipara is dedicated to the Virgin Mary and carries her name. It is better known nowadays as the Syrian monastery, or the monastery of the Syrians (Syriac Dayr al-Suryan) because monks of the West Syriac rite mainly used it from the 8th to the 14th century. In scholarly references from the nineteenth century, it is generally called the convent or monastery of Saint Mary Deipara.
Location of the Monastery of Saint Mary Deipara
Saint Mary El-Sourian is a Coptic Orthodox monastery located in Wadi El Natrun in the Nitrian Desert, Beheira Governorate, Egypt. More exactly, it stands about 500 meters northwest of the Monastery of Saint Pishoy.
Etymology, Foundation and ancient History
The exact date of the monastery’s foundation is unknown. However, most sources agree that its foundation occurred in the sixth century AD. The establishment of the sanctuary has a close connection to the Julianist heresy, which spread in Egypt during the papacy of Pope Timothy III of Alexandria.
However, it was in contradiction with the teaching of the Orthodox Church. The Julianists believed in the incorruptibility of Christ’s body. This belief held that Christ had taken human flesh that prevented him from being ideal, abstract, and corruptible. Nevertheless, in the monasteries of Scetes, a majority of the monks embraced the Julian heresy.
In reaction, those who did not follow the heresy obtained permission from governor Aristomachus to erect new churches and monasteries. Thus, they could settle apart from the Julians. However, they could often build these new facilities alongside the old ones, even keeping the same name but adding Theotokos. Accordingly, they recognise the significance of the incarnation, which the Julians seemed to minimise. Therefore, Saint Pishoy established the Syrian monastery, for he rejected the Julian heresy. They called it the Monastery of the Holy Virgin Theotokos at its construction.
Sale of the Monastery
Towards the beginning of the eighth century AD, a wealthy Syrian merchant from Tikrit bought the monastery for 12,000 dinars, who had settled in Cairo. This merchant converted the monastery for use by Syrian monks and rebaptised it Monastery of the Holy Virgin of the Syrians. It could be one of the sources of the monastery’s modern name. Nevertheless, it is also possible that Syrian monks had already inhabited the monastery since the fourth century AD, which could trace the monastery’s name to that period.
Like the rest of the monasteries in Scetes, the Syrian monastery was subject to fierce attacks by desert Bedouins and Berbers. The fifth of these attacks, which took place in 817 AD, was particularly disastrous to this monastery. Then in 850 AD, Matthew and Abraham rebuilt the monastery.
Moses of Nisibis
In 927 AD, one of the monastery’s monks, known as Moses of Nisibis, travelled to Baghdad to ask the Abbasid caliph Al-Muqtadir to grant tax exemption to the monasteries. Moses then travelled through the Syria region and Mesopotamia in search of manuscripts. After three years of travelling, he returned to Egypt, bringing 250 Syriac manuscripts. It made the Syrian monastery a prosperous and essential facility. It possessed many artistic treasures and a library rich in Syriac texts.
A large door exists, the Door of Prophecies or Gate of Prophecies. It features symbolic diagrams depicting the past and the future of the Christian faith through the eyes of Christian monks of the tenth century.
Medieval History of Monastery of Saint Mary Deipara
Based on a census taken by Mawhub ibn Mansur ibn Mufarrig, the co-author of the History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, the Syrian monastery had some sixty monks in 1088 AD. It was the third in the Nitrian Desert, after the Monastery of Saint Macarius the Great and the Monastery of Saint John, the Dwarf.
Period of Trouble
In the middle of the twelfth century, the Syrian monastery witnessed a period of trouble when no Syrian priest was present. However, in 2000, an inscription from 1285/1286 was found. The inscription recorded buildings or other activities in the monastery. It may have reflected an influx of Syrian refugees in the 1250s. In the fourteenth century, the plague decimated the monastery. When a monk named Moses from the Monastery of Mar Gabriel in Tur Abdin visited the monastery in 1413 AD, he found only one remaining Syrian monk.
Towards the end of the fifteenth century, the Patriarch of Antioch visited the Syrian monastery, granting it many privileges and donations to restore it to its former glory. However, Egyptian monks continued to populate the abbey, and by 1516 AD, only 18 out of 43 monks were Syrian. Pope Gabriel VII of Alexandria, a monk at the Syrian monastery, was able to supply ten monks to the Monastery of Saint Paul the Anchorite. He also sent twenty monks to the Monastery of Saint Anthony in the Eastern Desert after Bedouin raids damaged those two communities.
Visitors
In the seventeenth century, western travellers from France, Germany and England visited the monastery and reported two churches, one for the Syrians and the Copts. They also mention the miraculous Tree of Saint Ephrem. According to tradition, Saint Ephrem was a fourth-century Syrian theologian and ascetic from Nisibis. He sought to meet the holy monk Saint Pishoy and thus came to the monastic centres of Scetes. They could not communicate when the two men met because Ephrem spoke only Syriac. However, suddenly and miraculously, Saint Pishoy began to express himself in that language, enabling his visitor to understand him. During this exchange, Saint Ephrem leaned his staff against the hermitage door. All at once, it became rooted and even sprouted foliage. Near the church of the Holy Virgin, monks will continue to point out this tamarind, miraculously born from Ephrem’s staff, even today.
Peter Heyling, a Lutheran missionary from Lübeck, and Yusuf Simaan Assemani, a Lebanese envoy of Pope Clement XI of Rome, were visitors. They visited the Syrian monastery between the mid-seventeenth and mid-eighteenth centuries. However, they found no Syrian monks living in it at that period. The latter managed to acquire forty precious manuscripts from the monastery’s library today in the Vatican Library.
Modern History
Between 1839 and 1851, the British Museum in London could procure about five hundred Syriac manuscripts from the monastery’s library. These manuscripts deal with religious topics, philosophy, and literature. Famous visitors to the sanctuary during this time included Lansing (1862), Chester (1873), Junkers (1875), Jullien (1881) and Butler (1883).
The manuscripts found in the Syrian monastery inspired intense research on the Syriac language and culture. These documents are the oldest copies of important Greek classical texts, dating back to the fifth century. Many classical texts from Aristotle, Euclid, Archimedes, Hippocrates and Galen came to Western scholars only in their thirteenth-century Latin translations. Even these were often translations from earlier Arabic sources.
Current Building
Today, the Syrian monastery provides an excellent opportunity to study the development of Coptic wall painting. Between 1991 and 1999, archaeologists uncovered several wall paintings in the Church of the Holy Virgin. It was the same with the Chapel of the Forty-Nine Martyrs, dating from the seventh and the thirteenth centuries. There is currently an ongoing project to uncover, restore and conserve wall paintings within the monastery.
The monastery possesses a large wall, built towards the end of the ninth century, whose height varies between 9.5 and 11.5 meters. The sanctuary also includes a keep (tower) and a refectory. Two of the five churches inside the monastery carry Virgin Mary’s name. However, the rest of the churches have titles after the Forty-Nine Martyrs, Saints Honnos and Marutha, and Saint John, the Dwarf.
