The Copts and the West, 1439-1822
The European Discovery of the Egyptian Church

Discusses how 17C Catholic missionaries tried to force the Copts, Egyptian members of the Church of Alexandria, into union with the Church of Rome, and the slow accumulation of knowledge of Coptic beliefs, undertaken by Catholics and Protestants. This study also includes a survey of the study of the Coptic language in the West.

In seventeenth-century Europe the Copts, or the Egyptian members of the Church of Alexandria, were widely believed to hold the key to an ancient wisdom and an ancient theology. Their language was thought to lead to the deciphering of the hieroglyphs and their Church to retain traces of early Christian practices as well as early Egyptian customs. This book, the first full-length study of the subject, discusses the attempts of Catholic missionaries to force the Church of Alexandria into union with the Church of Rome and the slow accumulation of knowledge of Coptic beliefs, undertaken by Catholics and Protestants. It ends with a survey of the study of the Coptic language in the West and of the uses to which it was put by Biblical scholars, antiquarians, theologians and Egyptologists.

Introduction
PART ONE - THE COPTS IN EGYPT
1. An Ancient Church
2. Muslim Domination
PART TWO - THE MISSIONS
3. The Council of Florence
4. The First Jesuit Mission
5. New Approaches
6. Towards a Coptic Catholic Church
PART THREE - KNOWLEDGE OF THE COPTS
7. The First Stages
8. Confessional Clashes I
9. Confessional Clashes II
10. Jansenists and Jesuits
11. Protestants and the Enlightenment
PART FOUR - THE COPTIC LANGUAGE
12. Athanasius Kircher and His Shadow
13. Grammars, Dictionaries, and Dialects
14. Manuscript Collecting
15. Biblical Studies
Epilogue
Bibliography
General Index