Save
Save chapter to my Bookmarks
Cite
Cite this chapter
Print this chapter
Share
Share a link to this chapter
Free
Introduction
Elizabeth S. Bolman
Description: The Red Monastery Church: Beauty and Asceticism in Upper Egypt
The Red Monastery Church: Beauty and Asceticism in Upper Egypt
Monumental buildings physically manifest human imagination and desire. These two intangibles begin the long process of architectural creation, which involves many different people and a wide range of...
Author
Elizabeth S. Bolman
PublisherYale University Press
Copyright© 2016 by American Research Center in Egypt, Inc.
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23719
View chapters with similar subject tags
Chapter images ()
Loading image navigation...
No image index could be found for this publication.
Close this Panel
Show previous images Show next images
Introduction
Elizabeth S. Bolman
~
Description: Introduction to the Red Monastery Church, Sohag, Egypt
This 2012 video provides a fascinating overview of the Red Monastery Church and the extraordinary conservation efforts that were underway.
Monumental buildings physically manifest human imagination and desire. These two intangibles begin the long process of architectural creation, which involves many different people and a wide range of skills. Substantial funding and expertise are required to erect large-scale structures, but they are secondary to the initial idea. While masons and artists play an essential role in constructing and decorating a monument, another immaterial aspect of society affects its design and realization: decorum. Social rules inform architectural choices. Buildings can valorize the etiquette of acceptable architectural expression, or deviate from it, thus making a statement.1For an overview of architectural decorum, see Kohane and Hill 2001. For an excellent exploration of Ottoman architectural decorum, see Necipoğlu 2005, esp. 20–21. Along with decorum, function also affects decisions about location, morphology, scale, and materials, intersecting with factors such as available resources. Once constructed, buildings can survive for millennia, but they are not frozen in time, statically expressing the goals of a moment, a single person, or even a group of people. They are also agents, shaping viewers’ experiences, and in turn being affected by the passage of time, changing tastes, and the needs of later generations.2Gell 1998; Chua and Elliott 2013b. The workings of desire on the structure are never finished until all material traces are gone, and sometimes not even then, when lost monuments become legends. The reverse is also possible; some remarkable structures endure periods of obscurity, such as the late fifth-century church at a site now called the Red Monastery, in a remote part of Upper Egypt (fig. 7).
~
Description: Sanctuary facade wall, looking south, with a view into the triconch
7. The sanctuary facade wall, looking south, with a view into the triconch.
This book is about that extraordinary monument, a beautiful materialization of asceticism and authority. A community of Christian men made the decision a millennium and a half ago to build a large church, thus asserting the social centrality of their ascetic establishment at the Red Monastery. A significant part of that original monument and some of its major renovations still survive in astonishingly good condition, although the church has until very recently not received the renown that is its due. It was designed as a triconch basilica: a building with a rectangular, colonnaded hall leading to a three-lobed sanctuary. Its basic model was a larger church built a few decades earlier at the nearby White Monastery (fig. 8). Though the trefoil design was popular in the late Roman world, no other example, whether by itself or, as here, attached to a basilica, survives in such an excellent state of preservation. Additionally, the early Byzantine decoration of the sanctuary is almost intact and includes rich architectural sculpture, imposing figural compositions, and extensive ornamental paintings (fig. 9).
~
Description: Reconstructed ground plans of the White (left) and the Red (right) Monastery...
8. Reconstructed ground plans of the White (left) and Red (right) Monastery churches, to the same scale.
~
Description: Architectural polychromy, curtain, and deer
9. Architectural polychromy, curtain, and deer (phase 2), T.e.II.7.
A fortuitous conjunction of factors accounts for the superb state of the Red Monastery church. The arid climate of Egypt certainly played a role in its preservation, but probably equally important was a decision made by its monastic owners at some unknown point in the medieval period. Presumably anxious about structural instability in the triconch, they built enormous mud-brick bulwarks within the curves of each apse, up to and supporting the semidomes (fig. 10). These additions covered the sanctuary walls and engulfed the columns and capitals almost entirely, thus protecting their fragile painted surfaces for about half a millennium, before being removed in the early twentieth century (fig. 11).
~
Description: Northern lobe reinforced with mud-brick walls by Photograph taken by Jean...
10. The northern lobe reinforced with mud-brick walls, 1903. Photograph: Jean Clédat; Louvre, Paris, inv. EA27427.
~
Description: Northern lobe
11. The northern lobe, 2013.
It seems at first surprising that this dynamic building should be missing even from most specialized, scholarly literature. One reason for this absence dates back to the early Byzantine period and involves the history of Christian monasticism, a mode of existence that began in the eastern Mediterranean around 300 c.e.3Frank 2000a, 1–6. The beginnings of Christian celibate lifestyles date to the second century; Caner 2012, 592. One of its earliest practitioners was Antony of Egypt (d. 356), whose fame spread throughout the Roman Empire thanks to an account written by Athanasios, patriarch of Alexandria (d. 373).4Brakke 1998, 201–265. The popularity of the Vita Antonii focused the attention of Christians throughout the empire on the monks of Egypt and their emerging monastic institutions.5Harmless 2004, 59–60; Frank 2000a, 96–97 and n. 68. For discussions of the importance of Egyptian holy figures and the notion of the desert in the later West, see Leyser 2000, 113–134; Coon 2000, 135–162; Coon 2011, 49–50; Dijkstra and Dijk 2006. Narratives about these spiritual heroes, circulating in both Greek and Latin, inspired numerous travelers to search out holy ascetics in person and sometimes even to live among them.6Frank 2000a. The Apophthegmata Patrum (Sayings of the Desert Fathers), Historia Monachorum in Aegypto (History of the Monks of Egypt), and Historia Lausiaca (Lausiac History), all originally written in Greek, were instrumental in immortalizing the names of well over a hundred influential monks active in the fourth and fifth centuries.7Harmless 2004, 169–171, 275–304; Krawiec 2002, 4. Most of their desert settlements, Scetis (Wadi al-Natrun), Nitria, and Kellia, were not far from Alexandria and comparatively easy to reach.8Harmless 2004, 173–177, 275–283. In contrast, the founders and leaders of an enormous and powerful monastic association in Upper Egypt remained very little known outside of the province (figs. 12, 13).9Emmel 2004b, 151–152. This federation was centered at the White Monastery and included the nearby Red Monastery. The principal reason for the lack of knowledge about this large community was that narratives of the men who created and shaped these institutions, Pcol (fourth century), Pshoi (fourth century), and Shenoute (d. 465), were written not in Greek or Latin, but in Coptic, the last phase of the Egyptian language.10Bell 1983, 1–2; Harmless 2004, 445. Emmel also notes the fact that most travelers did not make it as far south as Panopolis; Emmel 2004a, 1:14 and n. 33. Thus, in the absence of a textual record comprehensible to the majority of the empire, people from outside of the country were largely unaware of their existence.
~
Description: Map of Egypt showing locations of monasteries and triconch basilicas
12. Map of Egypt with the locations of monasteries and triconch basilicas.
~
Description: Map of Egypt showing the region around the Red and White Monasteries as of 2005
13. Map of the region around the Red and White Monasteries as of 2005. Dark blue: Nile River; dark orange: urban constructions; green: agricultural areas; beige: desert terrain.
The White Monastery Federation is best known for its charismatic and domineering third leader, Shenoute (fig. 14), although Pcol actually founded the central establishment. About three kilometers (two miles) farther north, a man named Pshoi instituted the community that later became the Red Monastery. A women’s monastery was also part of this association. Its location can now be confidently placed within the nearby Ptolemaic temple at Atripe (Athribis), thanks to the discovery on-site of an early Byzantine, low-relief, painted sculpture showing eight men and one woman, most in the dress of the White Monastery Federation.11Sayed and Masry (2012, 24–25) have stated that the Ptolemaic temple al Atripe was almost certainly the site of the women’s community belonging to the federation, but that this point “is not yet proven archaeologically.” The discovery of this sculpture in the 1980s, in my opinion, confirms the identification of the temple as the site of the convent. For the discovery of the sculpture, see Samih Shafiq 2006. See also Bolman, Chapter 3 in this volume, and fig. 3.8. For a discussion of the various names of the temple site (Tripheion, Atripe, and Athribis), see Sayed and Masry 2012, 3, 6–8. In addition to the three monastic settlements, a few senior ascetics lived as hermits in the vicinity. The popular names for the two men’s communities, the White and Red Monasteries (Dayr al-Abyad and Dayr al-Ahmar), are first attested in the medieval period.12The thirteenth century for the former and the fifteenth century for the latter; Timm 1984–1992, 2:620, 622. Presumably they derive from the building materials used to construct the exterior walls of the two monumental churches at the heart of each settlement, white limestone and red brick (figs. 15, 16). Stephen Emmel and Bentley Layton present a nuanced expansion on these brief remarks in Chapter 2.13For a longer study, see Layton 2014.
~
Description: Shenoute, the most famous leader of the White Monastery Federation
14. Shenoute, the most famous leader of the White Monastery Federation (phase 3), T.n.II.6.
~
Description: White Monastery church from the southwest
15. The White Monastery church from the southwest.
~
Description: Red Monastery church from the northwest
16. The Red Monastery church from the northwest.
A few observations about monasticism in general will provide a background for the subjects covered in this book. The ideal as crafted by literary sources and artistic representations cast these ascetics as angels who made the arid desert to which they fled a verdant garden. They were heroes, radiant with light, who voluntarily died to the world and its pleasures by embracing death in advance of their physical demise.14Crislip 2005, 1–8; Caner 2012, 588–600; Bolman 2007a; Bolman 2001; Bolman 1998. This transformative way of life was intentional and creative. Monastics very deliberately aimed to reorder existence, even to overturn nature. These men and women attempted to overcome desire for such basic needs as food, sex, and sleep. They strove to perfect themselves as much as possible to obtain everlasting life in heaven.15Crislip 2005, 1–8; Caner 2012; Bolman 2007a; Bolman 1998.
Monastic models varied tremendously. The methods of Antony and Pachomios (d. 346) have come to represent the two extremes. Antony lived much of his life in solitude, retreating farther and farther into the desert, away from the Nile and its inhabitants. In contrast, his contemporary Pachomios organized his followers into a tightly knit group that lived, worked, prayed, and ate together in accordance with written monastic rules.16For anchoritic and cenobitic forms of monasticism, see Crislip, Chapter 1 in this volume; Harmless 2004, 115–116. So successful was his cenobitic (life in common) approach that, by the time of his death, Pachomios led nine men’s and two women’s communities.17Harmless 2004, 118–141, esp. 122. The Pachomian rule, as translated into Latin by Jerome (d. 420), later served as the basis for that used by the Benedictines, which in turn became the foundation for Western medieval monasticism.18Caner 2012, 590. It was also instrumental in shaping the ascetic community of the White Monastery Federation. Yet the divisions between the eremitic and cenobitic forms of monasticism were rarely as clear-cut as the two standard models suggest. Followers of men like Antony might form large communities in which members lived alone in cells arranged in close proximity to each other. Conversely, hermits could live in solitude apart from the cenobitic establishments to which they belonged, as happened at Shenoute’s federation.
Periodization and Nomenclature
In this book we use the convention Common Era (c.e.) for the time period traditionally called anno Domini (a.d.). Various additional dating systems are employed. In Roman Egypt, the calculation of time was often related to imperial reigns.19Bagnall 1993, 327–329. For example, one late antique calendar used in Egypt begins on 29 August 284, the first day of the Emperor Diocletian’s reign. The Muslim calendar was introduced after the Arab conquest of Egypt in 641. It starts with the Hijra (migration) of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Madina on 16 July 622, which resulted in the founding of the first Islamic polity. The calendar is thus known as the era of the Hijra and is usually referred to in the West in its Latin form, anno Hijrae (a.h.). After the conquest, Egyptian Christians continued to chart time according to the era of Diocletian.20Bagnall 1993, 327–329. By the eleventh century they had renamed this calendar the era of the Martyrs, or in its Latin form, anno Martyrorum (a.m.), commemorating the large numbers of Christians killed by that emperor.21Vliet 2007, 79; Freeman-Grenville 1977, 1–2; O’Leary 1937, 34–35. Conversions from a.h. and a.m. to c.e. follow the Gregorian calendar unless otherwise indicated.
The historical period in which the Red Monastery church was built has several names: late Roman, late antique, late ancient, and early Byzantine, all of which are used more or less interchangeably in this book. Islamic periodization is also sometimes employed: for example, the early medieval period, which spans the Arab conquest through the tenth century. The name Copt derives from the Greek Aigyptios (Egyptian) by way of the Arabic version of that word, Qibt. Although Copt literally means simply an Egyptian, in fact it signifies a Christian Egyptian.22For a discussion of the creation of an ethnically Egyptian Miaphysite identity in the post-conquest period, see Papaconstantinou 2006, esp. 71–72, 78–79. In this book the Christians of Egypt are not called Copts until the late ninth or tenth century, when the Arabization of the Christian population began in earnest.23Heijer 1999, 51–52; Mikhail 2014, 93–105.
Most historical names used in this book follow Greek spelling, except where a Latinized version is too well known to change it without risking confusion, such as Kyrillos for Cyril. Some individuals had both Coptic and Greek names, such as Pcol, also known as Paulos (Paul). The spelling of a name may also vary depending on the context in which it appears, for example, Shenoute when referring to the early Byzantine period, Shinudah when transliterating from medieval Arabic sources, and Shenouda when using a more popular modern Arabic transliteration. The words apa and abba in Coptic and Greek both mean father and are honorific titles for monks. Father is rendered as apa, except in transliterations of inscriptions, which are faithful to the source.
Pshoi, the founder of the Red Monastery, was also sometimes called Pshai as well as Petros (Peter). With the Arab conquest in the seventh century and the gradual replacement of Coptic and Greek by Arabic, Pshoi’s name became Bishay, often referred to by modern scholars as Bishoi, using the northern Egyptian ending. Since the Red Monastery church is in Upper Egypt, and because a prominent early ascetic from Scetis in the north was also named Bishoi, we will be using the southern Egyptian spelling, Bishay, when referring to the saint or his monastery in the medieval period and later. Today the official name of the Red Monastery commemorates Saints Bishay and Bigol (Pcol), although historically Pcol played only an indirect role in its foundation. When identifying it by its given rather than its colloquial name, historical sources from the fifth through the twentieth century—including those written by Shenoute himself—call it the Monastery of Pshoi (with various spellings).24See Emmel and Layton, Chapter 2 in this volume; Coquin and Martin 1991a; Meinardus 1999, 230; Grossmann 2002a, 536–539; Gabra 2002a, 101–104; Layton 2002, 26–27 and n. 9. As a final comment on nomenclature, some authors use the word monastic as a noun, referring to both male and female practitioners of asceticism.
The Red Monastery Church: Orientation
The church as it now exists represents two major phases of construction, as Nicholas Warner demonstrates in detail in Chapter 6 (fig. 17).25Large-scale, sustained archaeological work has proven impossible at the Red Monastery, despite considerable efforts over the years. The dramatic triconch sanctuary, its facade wall, and the adjoining side rooms were all built in the early Byzantine period, though there are some vital medieval and early twentieth-century structural interventions. In Chapter 5 Dale Kinney examines the origins and prevalence of the triconch as an architectural type, as well as its character and significance (fig. 18). Our dating of the church to the late fifth century rests largely on Kinney’s illuminating analysis of the architectural sculpture in Chapter 7. The tall exterior walls of the church were constructed sometime between the tenth century and 1285/1286 (fig. 19), although they include two monumental sculpted portals reused from the earlier structure. The fortified tower on the southern side of the building is approximately contemporary with the medieval walls. The galleries and roof of the nave no longer survive. In the middle ages, the sanctuary was completely enclosed, and it functioned as a self-contained church, with an altar in the eastern lobe, behind a screen.
~
Description: Isometric drawing showing the current condition of the Red Monastery church, Sohag,...
17. An isometric drawing showing the current condition of the Red Monastery church. Key: (1) triconch sanctuary; (2) ruined nave; (3) Church of the Virgin; (4) tower.
~
Description: Triconch (eastern and southern lobes) and the area in front of its facade wall
18. The triconch (eastern and southern lobes) and the area in front of its facade wall.
~
Description: Red Monastery church and tower from the southwest
19. The Red Monastery church and tower from the southwest.
The triconch design includes three apses rather than the typical single one, which creates a more complex space and provides a far broader field for large-scale images than exists in most church sanctuaries. The early Byzantine paintings date from between the late fifth and the sixth or early seventh centuries (fig. 20). Those from the medieval period probably range from the tenth to the late thirteenth centuries (fig. 21). Despite the often-repeated but incorrect characterization of Christian wall paintings in Egypt as frescoes, they are in fact made with tempera or encaustic (wax-based) paint applied on dry plaster. In Chapter 20, Luigi De Cesaris, Alberto Sucato, and Emiliano Ricchi discuss the three principal phases of early Byzantine painting, as well as a much less comprehensive fourth phase, and at least four medieval periods of work. The stratigraphic ordering of the phases depends on the plaster layer (rendering). For the most part, there is a close correlation between the plaster and paint layers of the Byzantine phases, although the paintings of the first phase may have been applied on the earliest rendering in different stages. The most basic characteristics of the rendering and paint layers are presented in table 1.
~
Description: Peacock below a circle pattern with ornament remnants
20. A peacock below a circle pattern (phase 2) with remnants of third-phase ornament, T.w.IV-left.
~
Description: Bird on an aedicule containing a cross, northern nave wall
21. A bird on an aedicule containing a cross (phase 5), northern nave wall.
~
Description: Phases and Approximate Dating of Painting in the Red Monastery Church
Table 1. Phases of painting in the Red Monastery church
All three of the major early Byzantine periods of work included substantial areas of ornamental paintings (see figs. 1, 9), which William Lyster analyzes in Chapter 8, focusing on working practice. I have written four chapters on the aesthetic effect, iconography, style, and function of the early Byzantine figural and ornamental paintings (Chapters 9, 10, 11, and 14) and have collaborated with Agnieszka Szymańska on Chapter 12, which explores depictions of ascetic ancestors. I also discuss the medieval paintings that decorate the sanctuary facade and nave walls in Chapter 16.
The smoke of lamps, and of incense used in the liturgy, darkens surfaces quickly. As the conservators explain in Chapter 20, little or no buildup of soot and dust was discovered between the early Byzantine paint layers. This observation makes it possible to assert with confidence that there were minimal lapses in time between the three major programs—all were probably done within about a hundred years or even less. Detailed drawings in Appendix 2 show the locations of the paintings in the triconch and facade wall, the regions of greatest decorative complexity in the building. Color coding identifies the phases to which they belong. The numbering system used throughout the book is also explained in Appendix 2. It enables readers easily to locate the positions of the sculpture and paintings in the church without requiring extensive and repetitive description. Abbreviations are used for the four lateral rooms, two on each side of the triconch sanctuary, nsr for the northern square room, nlr for the northern long room, ssr for the southern square room, and slr for the southern long room. Paul C. Dilley presents a transcription, translation, and analysis of the inscriptions in Chapter 13 and Appendix I. All illustrations are of the Red Monastery unless otherwise indicated.
A Diachronic Overview: The Red Monastery Church in Context, Fifth to Early Twenty-First Century
The region around the Red Monastery is now lush with fields and palm trees owing to year-round irrigation made possible by the Aswan High Dam (see fig. 4). In the early Byzantine period, it was desert—near the Nile and a major, cosmopolitan city, Panopolis, but nevertheless removed from the traditional world of the living. Today, Panopolis is called Akhmim, and its urban fabric, on the east bank, is complemented by the large city of Sohag, on the west bank. The Red Monastery sits farther west, at the foot of a limestone escarpment, a sedimentary layer dating to the Eocene period that is the residue of prehistoric seas.26Embabi 2004, 15–17, 19–20.
The history of the Red Monastery church is inextricably connected to that of the White Monastery Federation as a whole. Though the emphasis in this book is on the former, in many instances that monument cannot properly be understood without a consideration of the larger context. Life in all three of the monasteries that together constituted the federation was regimented and supervised to an extreme degree.27This paragraph follows Layton 2007. Male and female monastics had little contact with each other, for the most part.28Layton 2014, 22–23, 60, n. 18. Entrants abandoned their lives and social ties in favor of a new monastic community and reality. The completeness of this transition is perhaps best conveyed by the requirement that they surrender their clothes at the gatehouse in exchange for a monastic uniform. Within two or three months, they signed a document giving all personal possessions to the federation.29For a translation and extensive analysis of the rules, see Layton 2014, 78–80, 190–191. Their daily routine followed a stricter version of the Pachomian model. The Canons of Shenoute contain approximately five hundred rules that ordered every aspect of life.30Layton 2007, 45. The community was divided into groups that lived in, and were identified with, residential buildings called houses within the three compounds. The monastics slept in communal cells. They rose before dawn and went to church. Here they performed rounds of prayers while weaving reed mats and baskets. The monks then returned to their houses for additional prayer and handiwork. This activity lasted until about midday, when they moved to the refectory for their major meal of the day. Among the foods mentioned in the Canons are gruel, a little loaf, a few beans, and cucumbers; cooked food was offered one day each week, except during periods of fasting, such as Lent, when it was available only to the sick.31Canons 5, XL, 186–187; Layton 2007, 51. n. 38, 58, n. 78; Crislip 2005, 28–30, 74–75. After eating, some time was apparently devoted to individual projects, but in the afternoon the monks returned to their houses for more prayer and handiwork. This was followed by another large assembly in the church with more of the same. Each stage of this daily regimen was announced by the loud knocking of a mallet on a wooden post or board. The number of rounds of prayer at each meeting was precisely determined, and the number of items woven by each individual was carefully recorded.32Layton 2014, 70–75. Twice a week the community celebrated the liturgy in the church. Four weeks of each year were spent on “scrutiny” of the monastics’ lives, which involved the reading aloud of all of the rules.33Layton 2014, 82. Whether the “angelic life” of the average monastic was as radiant as the literary sources suggest is an open question. Certainly not everyone could live up to the ideal, and in the White Monastery Federation, those who failed were sometimes punished.34For example, one nun, mentioned in the Canons, “stealthily took things” (perhaps extra food) and was given “twenty blows of the rod.” Canons 4, BZ, 346; Layton 2007, 63, n. 109. As is indicated by this overview, the central church featured significantly in daily life; in each of the two male monasteries, it was by far the largest, most elaborate, and most expensive building.35We do not know what the women’s early church was like. The remains of a church in the pharaonic temple at Atripe, to the south of the White Monastery, are later. In Chapter 4 Father Ugo Zanetti and Stephen J. Davis discuss the fundamental role of ritual and spirituality in the federation, both inside and outside the church.
Most members of the federation stayed within their walled compounds, but the residents of these monasteries nevertheless interacted with the world around them. When the Red Monastery church was constructed, Egypt was part of the early Byzantine Empire, and Panopolis was far more involved in Mediterranean culture than Sohag and Akhmim are today. Owing to the greater speed of sailing, compared to overland travel, the Mediterranean and Nile made Upper Egypt more accessible from Constantinople than many other places physically far closer to the capital. The Byzantine aristocracy, some with large estates in Egypt, traveled frequently, as did many other people in the empire for reasons of work, trade, and pilgrimage.36Behlmer 1998, 349; Sarris 2006, 10. Like other regions, Egypt had a distinct local character. For example, many residents spoke Coptic. By the fifth century, however, Egypt was thoroughly integrated into the fabric of the empire.37Bagnall 2007; Lewis 1984; Sarris 2006, 10, 14–15. Panopolis, renowned as a center of literary culture and textile manufacture, was also the home of people who became famous and powerful in the capital and far beyond it.38Bolman forthcoming b, chap. 1; Sarris 2006, 10, 15; Cameron 2007, 34–38; Vliet 2002, vii–viii. We should therefore think of the residents of Egypt, at least the one-third of the population that lived in urban centers, as being as much Byzantines as Egyptians.39The error of describing the Christians of Egypt as Copts in the early Byzantine period has been observed by many recent scholars, such as Judith McKenzie 2007, 230, 261. For one-third of the population being urban dwellers, see Sarris 2006, 10. In Chapter 1, Andrew Crislip provides more historical context, filling in details about the major historical issues and figures in Egypt at this time.
With the Arab conquest in 641, the political status of Egypt as part of the Byzantine Empire came to an abrupt end. Many aspects of life remained essentially the same, at least at first. The country and its people, however, changed in the following centuries. Arabic rather than Greek became the language of government and trade; Fustat (Old Cairo) replaced Alexandria as the capital; taxes were sent no longer to Constantinople but to Damascus and later Baghdad; and Islam replaced Christianity as the official religion of the country. Some Christians converted, but the adoption of Islam was a relatively slow process in Egypt. In contrast, the Arabic language spread rapidly. By about the ninth or tenth century, many Christian Egyptians had begun speaking Arabic as their first language. As they participated more and more in the Muslim-dominated society of the Nile Valley, they increasingly adopted the language, manners, and customs of their rulers. These changes in lifestyle, in combination with the maintenance of traditional beliefs and practices, created the Arabized Christian culture known as Coptic.40Mikhail 2014, 93–105.
In the medieval period, as Mark N. Swanson, Paul C. Dilley, and I explore in Chapters 15 through 17, the fortunes of the Copts rose and fell. The White Monastery Federation survived at least into the 1340s. The fourteenth century proved to be a particularly difficult time for Christians in Egypt. By its end their numbers and resources had been greatly reduced.41Swanson 2008, 49. At some point before the federation’s demise, the roofs of the Red and White Monastery churches both collapsed, and the eastern ends of the buildings were enclosed and remodeled to function as complete churches, occupying considerably smaller footprints. The outlying monastic structures were eventually abandoned and fell into ruin. Some time later, the open-air naves of the two monasteries were opportunistically adapted into villages, housing local priests and their families (fig. 22).
~
Description: Nave of the church filled with houses, looking southwest
22. The nave of the church filled with houses, looking southwest, circa 1897–1898. Photograph: Bock 1901, pl. XXIV.
Very few Westerners visited the Red and White Monastery churches in the late medieval and early modern periods, as Nicholas Warner and Cédric Meurice attest in Chapter 18. By the early twentieth century, a few foreigners with an interest in historical architecture and its documentation had recognized the importance of these monuments, as well as the fact that they were in a perilous state of neglect. As a result, the two churches were brought to the attention of the Comité de Conservation des Monuments de l’Art Arabe (hereafter referred to as the Comité), Egypt’s first official organization concerned with the preservation of historic monuments. The Comité undertook an extensive restoration of the two buildings between 1909 and 1912, as Warner and Meurice discuss in Chapter 19. Without the Comités efforts, both monuments would today be little more than ruins.
In the 1960s Serge Sauneron, then director of the Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale du Caire (ifao), recognized the value and endangered state of ancient Coptic paintings in churches throughout Egypt, and he began a massive project to document, study, and publish them. This resulted in the important series La peinture murale chez les Coptes. The Red and White Monasteries were intended to be part of this endeavor, but political troubles in the area and the press of work at other sites meant that only a few preliminary campaigns took place.42Laferrière 2008, 2–4, 11–17, figs. 2–8, pl. 11 (White Monastery), 21–32, pls. III–V (Red Monastery); Innemée 2004, 1321. In 1962 the Darmstadt Technische Hochschule produced a detailed series of drawings of both churches (one is reproduced as fig. 19.11).43Thanks to Peter Grossmann for providing the Darmstadt plan used as fig. 19.11. In 1994 the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities (sca) undertook a short conservation campaign in the south lobe of the Red Monastery church.44Innemée 2004, 1322. The sca also excavated areas outside the building.45This work began in the 1980s and continued intermittently; Warner 2011, 1.
The next major transformative phase began in the late twentieth century with the reappropriation for monastic use of the ancient sites of the White and Red Monasteries, including their historic churches, as Father Maximous EI-Antony explains in the prologue. The speed of change in this area, as in all Egypt, rapidly increased in this period, and the trend shows no sign of diminishing. It is driven by many factors, not least of which is massive, escalating population growth.
I conceived of the conservation project that generated this book in 1999. When I walked into the church for the first time, the walls were blackened with smoke and dust. Pews, chandeliers, fluorescent lights, fans, curtains, rugs, an early modern sanctuary screen, and recent icons crowded the triconch (fig. 23).46With me were William Lyster, Salima Ikram, and Nicholas Warner. The majesty of the architecture and the dynamic space it shaped were nevertheless breathtaking. It was also apparent that most of the interior was covered with early Byzantine paintings. In those initial moments, as I looked around the sanctuary, I recognized the importance of the monument and the urgent need for conservation of its wall paintings. Having had the great privilege to work with two master conservators, Adriano Luzi and Luigi De Cesaris, at the Red Sea monasteries dedicated to Saint Antony and Saint Paul, I knew that the obscured paintings could be cleaned and brought back to life (figs. 24, 25).47Bolman 2002a; Lyster 2008.
~
Description: View of the northern lobe before conservation
23. View of the northern lobe before conservation, 2002.
~
Description: View of the three semidomes after the first test cleanings
24. View of the three semidomes after the first test cleanings, 2002.
~
Description: View of the three semidomes after conservation
25. View of the three semidomes after conservation, 2012.
Before the start of the project, the Red Monastery church was essentially unknown and often undervalued by the few who were aware of its existence, both within and outside Egypt. Only a handful of specialists in Egyptian Christian visual culture have recognized the significance of the building and its decoration over the years.48Those who recognized the importance of the paintings include Marcus Simaika, BCCMAA 29, 1912, PV 191:VIII, 18; Jean Clédat, who made watercolors of the paintings, now lost, some of which are reproduced in Monneret de Villard 1925–1926, 2: figs. 208, 210–212; Otto Meinardus 1969–1970b, 1974–1975, 1981; Paul van Moorsel, Pierre Lafferiére, and Karel Innemée: Innemée 2004, 1321; Lafferière 2008, 21–32; Hjalmar Torp 1971, 35–41; Gawdat Gabra 2002a, 101–104; Thelma Thomas, in conversation, in 2002. Several authors mention the White and sometimes also the Red Monastery churches, but they do not refer to paintings: Wessel 1965, 160–181; Bourguet 1971, 114, 117, 140–141; Effenberger 1976, 180–181, 211–215; Török 2005, 214–215 (he does mention architectural polychromy at Bawit and Saqqara; see 339–340). McKenzie mentioned the architectural polychromy at the Red Monastery as evidence of its being “more economically constructed” than the White Monastery; McKenzie 2007, 271–282, esp. 281; Severin 1991 made the same assumption. The layers of soot, dust, and debris covering the walls made the study of the paintings very difficult, but certainly not impossible.49A tendency among Western scholars to dismiss the importance of architectural polychromy may also help account for the general lack of interest in the building. For a historiographic critique of architectural polychromy at the Red and White Monasteries and beyond, see Bolman 2006a. Additionally, the vexed historiography of so-called Coptic art, plagued by the imposition of pejorative models onto incompletely analyzed evidence, bad forgeries, and the fundamentally flawed notion that Upper Egypt was cut off from the rest of the early Byzantine Empire, has meant that no one would expect a monument like the Red Monastery church to exist so far from Alexandria.50For the historiography of Coptic art, see Thomas 2000, xvii–xxiv; Török 2005, 9–36. For Coptic forgeries, see Russman 2008, 62–83. Nor did members of the Coptic Church understand the historical value of the building. When I first spoke about beginning site work there with several high-level monastic administrators responsible for the Red and White Monasteries, they told me that I was surely mistaken, and I really wanted to work at the larger and better-known White Monastery church. It took a considerable effort to persuade them that there was no error.
I submitted my first formal application for funding to arce in 2000.51Bolman 2000. That year, at the International Association of Coptic Studies Congress in Leiden, I also convened a group of scholars to plan interdisciplinary work involving the Red and White Monasteries.52In 2000 I convened the Consortium for Research and Conservation at the Monasteries of the Sohag Region. Building on work done previously by the SCA and Peter Grossmann at the site, Darlene Brooks Hedstrom, Peter Sheehan, and I directed archaeological work at the White Monastery, in collaboration with the SCA and the Coptic Church. Funding came from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Dumbarton Oaks, the Antiquities Endowment Fund of ARCE, and Wittenberg and Temple Universities. In 2008 Stephen Davis took over as executive director and Gillian Pyke served as director of excavations, and the project came under the auspices of the Yale Monastic Archaeology Project. Textual scholars are making great progress studying Shenoute’s corpus, a project that has been increasing in momentum over the last twenty years. Our interpretation of the Red Monastery church draws on this work and also enhances our understanding of Shenoute’s amazing monastic institution. We are at the beginning of what promises to be an even greater flourishing of Shenoutean studies. In 2001 the Byzantine Studies Program of Dumbarton Oaks showed great foresight by providing crucial initial funding for preliminary documentation and project development before any spectacular results were visible.53Grossmann, Brooks Hedstrom, and Bolman 2004. Following these initial steps, the founder of the St. Mark Foundation for Coptic History Studies, Fawzy G. Estafanous, and I successfully nominated the two churches for inclusion on the World Monuments Watch 2002 List of 100 Most Endangered Sites, raising awareness of their importance for world heritage, as well as publicizing their threatened states.54World Monuments Watch 2002, 14. In 2003 arce agreed to conserve the enclosed eastern end of the Red Monastery church. With the support of the American people, usaid paid for all of the conservation in the monument, its aim being to increase tourism in the region and stimulate the local economy. arce administered the usaid grants for the entirety of the conservation project, devoting a massive amount of time, expertise, and effort to the work for well over a decade (fig. 26).
~
Description: Red Monastery team with members of USAID, ARCE and the MoA, at the eastern end of...
26. The Red Monastery team with members of usaid, arce and the MoA, at the eastern end of the nave, December 2010: (back row) John Pasch, Sylvia Atalla, Michael Jones, Jim Beaver, Father Maximous El-Antony, Alberto Sucato, and Elizabeth S. Bolman; (middle row) Esam Abdel Raouf, Luigi De Cesaris, Emiliano Ricchi, Valentina Peri Proto, and Sara Scarafoni; (front row) Chiara Di Marco, Emiliano Abrusca, and Riccardo Remigio.
Luzi and De Cesaris completed the first test cleanings in the Red Monastery church in 2002 (fig. 27). These two extraordinarily talented directors of conservation sadly passed away during the course of the project, Luzi in 2003 and De Cesaris in 2011. After Luzi’s death, De Cesaris and Sucato, later joined by Ricchi, directed the conservation. Sucato, Ricchi, and their team persevered with tremendous fortitude in the wake of De Cesaris’s death, completing ten years of fine art conservation in 2012. Site work comprised extended campaigns involving as many as thirteen conservators at any one time, living for almost half of each year away from their homes and families. The project took over 5,700 individual days of skilled conservation, entailing consolidation, cleaning, and aesthetic reintegration (fig. 28). Substantial additional work was subsequently carried out by Warner, including building conservation and preparation for ecclesiastical use.55Warner was responsible for limestone block replacements (facade and clerestory) and flooring; display of fragments of the original cornice and carved architectural elements; joinery throughout; handrails; stabilization of the dark gray column in the nave; reerection of another column with a late antique capital in the nave; plastering the twentieth-century sections of the exterior facade wall; roofing repairs; conservation of the trilobed portal in the exterior facade wall; and lighting design in association with Philips Egypt. In 2007 Sam Price conducted a detailed static analysis survey, in which he identified various deformations in the structure of the sanctuary, particularly on its southern side and on the sanctuary facade, where the wall is up to thirteen centimeters (five inches) out of plumb.56Price 2007. Earthquakes seem to have been the principal cause for the condition of the building, but Price concluded that overall the structure remains stable in its present configuration; ancient and modern elements act together to maintain that state. In 2015, with Warner’s assistance, Pietro Gasparri laser-scanned the Red Monastery church, creating an exceptionally high-quality, three-dimensional record of it.
~
Description: Adriano Luzi completing the first test cleanings, northern semidome, Red Monastery...
27. Adriano Luzi completing the first test cleaning, northern semidome, 2002.
~
Description: Conservators on scaffolding in the eastern semidome, Red Monastery church, Sohag,...
28. Conservators on scaffolding in the eastern semidome.
Both constructing and conserving monumental buildings take such an enormous investment of time and resources that politics is inevitably involved. No doubt this was the case when the Red Monastery church was erected in the late fifth century, although we lack textual data on the subject; it certainly was when Shenoute built his church at the White Monastery a few decades earlier, as I explain in Chapter 3. Politics and competing agendas also affected important decisions made by the arce team during the final phase of work at the site. The conservation project was completed in the wake of the Egyptian revolution of 2011. During this complex and volatile period, Copts and their heritage were at times attacked; Christians were killed and churches were burned. The issue of how the Red Monastery church would be used once the project was finished became a contentious one. In 2012 Gerry D. Scott, the director of arce, convened a meeting at the Red Monastery with a wide range of people involved in the project, as well as specialists in historic preservation, to consider the future of the church. Along with some other scholars, I argued vigorously for its being kept open to the public. According to this plan, the monastic community would hold services in the ancient church only at Christmas and Easter, using the several other churches recently built in the compound for liturgical purposes during the rest of the year. The monks and some other project members, including Michael Jones, who oversaw the arce management of the grant, wanted the church to be devoted full-time to its original purpose. After careful deliberation, Scott ultimately decided to adopt this last scenario. Jones explains the rationale for this position in the preface.57For a more detailed discussion of his position, see Jones 2012. I strenuously opposed this plan in part because women are almost never allowed into Coptic church sanctuaries, and men often have very restricted access as well, unless they are members of the clergy. This arrangement means that the spectacular triconch area, which was the primary focus of our long project, is effectively closed to all Egyptians except for a handful of monks. Access for foreign tourists is also severely limited by the schedules, availability, and willingness of the resident monastic priests, who need to remove part of the altar before women can be permitted to enter the sanctuary. Though the choice to return the church to monastic control for ongoing religious use is regrettable from my point of view, it would have been difficult for Scott to make a different decision, and probably impossible to implement my preferred scenario, in the current political climate.
The integrity of the oldest Byzantine painting in the sanctuary was also compromised as part of the preparation of the church for its current monastic community. The problem was admittedly a complicated one that had no easy solution. Four phases of painting had been applied to the eastern semidome of the triconch, one on top of the other, in the fifth and sixth centuries. At various points, some of the plaster and lime wash covering the later phases fell off, revealing the preliminary sketch of the earliest painting underneath. This first-phase depiction is of the Ascension of Christ, and it is very probably the earliest surviving monumental apse painting in a church in the world. The remnants of the later compositions that still remained in the semidome, however, created visual confusion. Over my strong, sustained protest, the conservators’ solution was to obscure partially the early Ascension, while emphasizing the fourth-phase monumental figure of Christ, which had been only faintly visible when the semidome was initially cleaned (see figs. 20.29, 20.30). The highly controversial subject of this reintegration is addressed by Jones and the conservators, all of whom were in favor of it.58Michael Jones has stated: “While the restored image is now a modern creation that blends several different phases of original plaster and paint layers into a single contemporary phase, it is still possible to see all extant and fragmentary layers exposed at once as they had survived into modern times” (Jones, forthcoming). In my opinion, it is not possible to discern “all extant and fragmentary layers.” For example, the figure of the first-phase Christ has been almost completely obscured by the recreation of the white face and neck of the fourth-phase Christ in Majesty. The claim made by De Cesaris, Sucato, and Ricchi in Chapter 20 that when re-creating the fourth-phase Christ they only used the “dirty-water technique of aesthetic presentation . . . where white plaster without any vestiges of color was visible” is called into question by a comparison of the before and after photographs of the eastern semidome; see figs. 20.29, 20.30. The enhancement satisfied the monastic community by providing a coherent devotional subject. One very real concern in situations such as this one is that the monks will themselves decide to repaint images that are difficult to see, without involving professionals.59In the late twentieth century, at the Monastery of Saint Paul, a woman was permitted to redraw medieval paintings using indelible markers. In Cairo, at Abu Sarga, in the Chapel of Saint George, someone painted an illusionistic face onto a medieval painting. As of 2013, the important and delicate paintings in this chapel had been covered by cement.
Conclusion
The Red Monastery church dates to the third or fourth generation of Christian monasticism and stands very close to the beginning of a tradition that now seems natural, indeed inevitable: the construction of beautiful architecture by ascetics who were dedicated to leaving society and its concerns behind them (fig. 29).60For the importance of monumental architecture in early Western monasticism, see Coon 2011, 61. Monumental buildings were not habitual, unquestioned components of fifth-century monasticism, yet at both the White and Red Monasteries imposing churches were constructed at this time. I signal the importance of this paradox in the subtitle to this book, “Beauty and Asceticism,” and explore it further in Chapter 3. In the fifth century some people strongly opposed the construction of such edifices for the use of ascetic communities. Large-scale monuments were more typically commissioned by elite members of early Byzantine society and not, at least at first, by those who had turned their backs on it.
~
Description: East-west section of the triconch, looking north
29. An east-west section of the triconch, looking north, showing (from left to right): the western nave wall with a standing column, the Comité facade wall with a recessed medieval portal, the transverse area in front of the triconch, the early Byzantine facade wall and northern chancel arch column, the northern and eastern lobes of the triconch, and the eastern exterior wall. Laser scan, Pietro Gasparri.
This book is the first major study of the Red Monastery church, a building that manifests the tremendously creative imagination of early monasticism. Our consideration of the monument ranges from material issues relating to its construction, design, and decoration to abstract subjects such as its aesthetic effect, the ways that its original community conceived of it, and its inestimable value for world heritage. This volume includes analyses of the two large-scale conservation projects that have preserved the church, and it explores the history and significance of the Red Monastery from its inception in the late fourth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century. With such a rich subject, no single publication can be comprehensive, but this book provides an introduction to the monument and serves as a foundation for future work. Occasional differences of opinion or emphasis exist in the ensuing chapters. In an effort to present the evidence and scholarship as fully as possible, these have not been changed.
 
1     For an overview of architectural decorum, see Kohane and Hill 2001. For an excellent exploration of Ottoman architectural decorum, see Necipoğlu 2005, esp. 20–21. »
2     Gell 1998; Chua and Elliott 2013b. »
3     Frank 2000a, 1–6. The beginnings of Christian celibate lifestyles date to the second century; Caner 2012, 592. »
4     Brakke 1998, 201–265. »
5     Harmless 2004, 59–60; Frank 2000a, 96–97 and n. 68. For discussions of the importance of Egyptian holy figures and the notion of the desert in the later West, see Leyser 2000, 113–134; Coon 2000, 135–162; Coon 2011, 49–50; Dijkstra and Dijk 2006. »
6     Frank 2000a. »
7     Harmless 2004, 169–171, 275–304; Krawiec 2002, 4. »
8     Harmless 2004, 173–177, 275–283. »
9     Emmel 2004b, 151–152. »
10     Bell 1983, 1–2; Harmless 2004, 445. Emmel also notes the fact that most travelers did not make it as far south as Panopolis; Emmel 2004a, 1:14 and n. 33. »
11     Sayed and Masry (2012, 24–25) have stated that the Ptolemaic temple al Atripe was almost certainly the site of the women’s community belonging to the federation, but that this point “is not yet proven archaeologically.” The discovery of this sculpture in the 1980s, in my opinion, confirms the identification of the temple as the site of the convent. For the discovery of the sculpture, see Samih Shafiq 2006. See also Bolman, Chapter 3 in this volume, and fig. 3.8. For a discussion of the various names of the temple site (Tripheion, Atripe, and Athribis), see Sayed and Masry 2012, 3, 6–8. »
12     The thirteenth century for the former and the fifteenth century for the latter; Timm 1984–1992, 2:620, 622. »
13     For a longer study, see Layton 2014. »
14     Crislip 2005, 1–8; Caner 2012, 588–600; Bolman 2007a; Bolman 2001; Bolman 1998. »
15     Crislip 2005, 1–8; Caner 2012; Bolman 2007a; Bolman 1998. »
16     For anchoritic and cenobitic forms of monasticism, see Crislip, Chapter 1 in this volume; Harmless 2004, 115–116. »
17     Harmless 2004, 118–141, esp. 122. »
18     Caner 2012, 590. »
19     Bagnall 1993, 327–329. »
20     Bagnall 1993, 327–329. »
21     Vliet 2007, 79; Freeman-Grenville 1977, 1–2; O’Leary 1937, 34–35. »
22     For a discussion of the creation of an ethnically Egyptian Miaphysite identity in the post-conquest period, see Papaconstantinou 2006, esp. 71–72, 78–79. »
23     Heijer 1999, 51–52; Mikhail 2014, 93–105. »
24     See Emmel and Layton, Chapter 2 in this volume; Coquin and Martin 1991a; Meinardus 1999, 230; Grossmann 2002a, 536–539; Gabra 2002a, 101–104; Layton 2002, 26–27 and n. 9. »
25     Large-scale, sustained archaeological work has proven impossible at the Red Monastery, despite considerable efforts over the years. »
26     Embabi 2004, 15–17, 19–20. »
27     This paragraph follows Layton 2007. »
28     Layton 2014, 22–23, 60, n. 18. »
29     For a translation and extensive analysis of the rules, see Layton 2014, 78–80, 190–191. »
30     Layton 2007, 45. »
31     Canons 5, XL, 186–187; Layton 2007, 51. n. 38, 58, n. 78; Crislip 2005, 28–30, 74–75. »
32     Layton 2014, 70–75. »
33     Layton 2014, 82. »
34     For example, one nun, mentioned in the Canons, “stealthily took things” (perhaps extra food) and was given “twenty blows of the rod.” Canons 4, BZ, 346; Layton 2007, 63, n. 109. »
35     We do not know what the women’s early church was like. The remains of a church in the pharaonic temple at Atripe, to the south of the White Monastery, are later. »
36     Behlmer 1998, 349; Sarris 2006, 10. »
37     Bagnall 2007; Lewis 1984; Sarris 2006, 10, 14–15. »
38     Bolman forthcoming b, chap. 1; Sarris 2006, 10, 15; Cameron 2007, 34–38; Vliet 2002, vii–viii. »
39     The error of describing the Christians of Egypt as Copts in the early Byzantine period has been observed by many recent scholars, such as Judith McKenzie 2007, 230, 261. For one-third of the population being urban dwellers, see Sarris 2006, 10. »
40     Mikhail 2014, 93–105. »
41     Swanson 2008, 49. »
42     Laferrière 2008, 2–4, 11–17, figs. 2–8, pl. 11 (White Monastery), 21–32, pls. III–V (Red Monastery); Innemée 2004, 1321. »
43     Thanks to Peter Grossmann for providing the Darmstadt plan used as fig. 19.11. »
44     Innemée 2004, 1322. »
45     This work began in the 1980s and continued intermittently; Warner 2011, 1. »
46     With me were William Lyster, Salima Ikram, and Nicholas Warner. »
47     Bolman 2002a; Lyster 2008. »
48     Those who recognized the importance of the paintings include Marcus Simaika, BCCMAA 29, 1912, PV 191:VIII, 18; Jean Clédat, who made watercolors of the paintings, now lost, some of which are reproduced in Monneret de Villard 1925–1926, 2: figs. 208, 210–212; Otto Meinardus 1969–1970b, 1974–1975, 1981; Paul van Moorsel, Pierre Lafferiére, and Karel Innemée: Innemée 2004, 1321; Lafferière 2008, 21–32; Hjalmar Torp 1971, 35–41; Gawdat Gabra 2002a, 101–104; Thelma Thomas, in conversation, in 2002. Several authors mention the White and sometimes also the Red Monastery churches, but they do not refer to paintings: Wessel 1965, 160–181; Bourguet 1971, 114, 117, 140–141; Effenberger 1976, 180–181, 211–215; Török 2005, 214–215 (he does mention architectural polychromy at Bawit and Saqqara; see 339–340). McKenzie mentioned the architectural polychromy at the Red Monastery as evidence of its being “more economically constructed” than the White Monastery; McKenzie 2007, 271–282, esp. 281; Severin 1991 made the same assumption. »
49     A tendency among Western scholars to dismiss the importance of architectural polychromy may also help account for the general lack of interest in the building. For a historiographic critique of architectural polychromy at the Red and White Monasteries and beyond, see Bolman 2006a. »
50     For the historiography of Coptic art, see Thomas 2000, xvii–xxiv; Török 2005, 9–36. For Coptic forgeries, see Russman 2008, 62–83. »
51     Bolman 2000. »
52     In 2000 I convened the Consortium for Research and Conservation at the Monasteries of the Sohag Region. Building on work done previously by the SCA and Peter Grossmann at the site, Darlene Brooks Hedstrom, Peter Sheehan, and I directed archaeological work at the White Monastery, in collaboration with the SCA and the Coptic Church. Funding came from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Dumbarton Oaks, the Antiquities Endowment Fund of ARCE, and Wittenberg and Temple Universities. In 2008 Stephen Davis took over as executive director and Gillian Pyke served as director of excavations, and the project came under the auspices of the Yale Monastic Archaeology Project. Textual scholars are making great progress studying Shenoute’s corpus, a project that has been increasing in momentum over the last twenty years. Our interpretation of the Red Monastery church draws on this work and also enhances our understanding of Shenoute’s amazing monastic institution. We are at the beginning of what promises to be an even greater flourishing of Shenoutean studies. »
53     Grossmann, Brooks Hedstrom, and Bolman 2004. »
54     World Monuments Watch 2002, 14. »
55     Warner was responsible for limestone block replacements (facade and clerestory) and flooring; display of fragments of the original cornice and carved architectural elements; joinery throughout; handrails; stabilization of the dark gray column in the nave; reerection of another column with a late antique capital in the nave; plastering the twentieth-century sections of the exterior facade wall; roofing repairs; conservation of the trilobed portal in the exterior facade wall; and lighting design in association with Philips Egypt. »
56     Price 2007. »
57     For a more detailed discussion of his position, see Jones 2012. »
58     Michael Jones has stated: “While the restored image is now a modern creation that blends several different phases of original plaster and paint layers into a single contemporary phase, it is still possible to see all extant and fragmentary layers exposed at once as they had survived into modern times” (Jones, forthcoming). In my opinion, it is not possible to discern “all extant and fragmentary layers.” For example, the figure of the first-phase Christ has been almost completely obscured by the recreation of the white face and neck of the fourth-phase Christ in Majesty. The claim made by De Cesaris, Sucato, and Ricchi in Chapter 20 that when re-creating the fourth-phase Christ they only used the “dirty-water technique of aesthetic presentation . . . where white plaster without any vestiges of color was visible” is called into question by a comparison of the before and after photographs of the eastern semidome; see figs. 20.29, 20.30. »
59     In the late twentieth century, at the Monastery of Saint Paul, a woman was permitted to redraw medieval paintings using indelible markers. In Cairo, at Abu Sarga, in the Chapel of Saint George, someone painted an illusionistic face onto a medieval painting. As of 2013, the important and delicate paintings in this chapel had been covered by cement. »
60     For the importance of monumental architecture in early Western monasticism, see Coon 2011, 61. »