Sinai, Autocephalous Church of

JOHN A. MCGUCKIN

One of the most venerable monasteries in the Orthodox world, St. Catherine’s, is located in a powerfully dramatic setting at the foot of Mount Sinai in Egypt. The great mountain (Jebel Musa) that broodingly hangs over it is a sacred site to three world religions. The rocky area began to be occu­pied by hermit monks (it was and remains a true wilderness) who occupied caves in the region, and probably had a communal settlement there before the 4th century, since parts of the present Justinianic site (dating from the 6th century and beyond) already incorporated Constantinian-era fortifications in the innermost buildings.

From ancient times, Sinai, and the monastic community which settled around it, was a major pilgrimage destination for Christians. It is first mentioned in Christian literary sources in the Voyages of Egeria, a travelogue written by a western lady (possibly a nun) from the late 4th century. Pilgrims were attracted there to see the site of the Burning Bush, the mountain top where the revelation of the covenant to Moses took place, and also because of the increasing reputation of the monastery’s ascetics. Later in the monastery’s history its dedication changed from the Transfigu­ration, and also the Virgin of the Burning Bush (an incarnational typology of the Theotokos in which she was compared to the bush that blazed containing the pres­ence of God but could not be consumed by the flames) to that of St. Catherine the Great Martyr of Alexandria (patron of the “Catherine Wheel”), whose relics were laid in the monastery church and attracted large numbers of medieval pilgrims. The basilical church’s apsidal end still contains the small Chapel of the Burning Bush, whose roots were originally here, but whose branches are now cultivated outside the eastern wall of the church so that pilgrims can take souve­nir leaves. All entering this chapel still must remove their shoes, as Moses was once commanded by God.

Plate 70 The fortified monastery of St. Catherine at Sinai, built by Emperor Justinian in the 6th century to protect the monastic community who had been living there from the 3rd century. Photo by John McGuckin.

By the late 7th century Sinai had pro­duced (or influenced) some of the leading ascetical theorists of the Christian world, and was “in the mind” of world Orthodox leaders, who patronized it throughout its long history: from the Byzantine emperors, to the Romanian Voivodes, to the last tsar of Russia. The Sinai community first heard rumors of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 months afterward, when they were puzzled as to why the usual Romanov trib­utary caravan of supplies had not reached them from Cairo. One of its higumens was St. John Klimakos, who wrote his 7th-century text The Ladder of Divine Ascent for the instruction of the Sinai nov­ices. It remains as one of the charter documents of Orthodox monastic spiritu­ality. Anastasius of Sinai, Stephen, and Neilos are just a few of the other great saints the monastery produced.

By the late 5th century the desert monas­teries of Egypt, including Sinai, were suffer­ing increasing depredations from tribal raiders, as the Byzantine hold on the terri­tories was increasingly relaxed. Mount Sinai itself was threatened on several occasions with complete extinction as a Christian settlement, but the Emperor Justinian, with an eye to the venerability of the site, as well as its strategic advantage as a military post, deliberately fortified the buildings in a massive set of works in the 6th century, and stationed a garrison there, resettling several villages of Christians nearby for the service of the monks and the military garri­son. Those who remain today as the tiny lay membership of this church often claim to be the descendants of those settlers, though the majority of the Bedouin (especially the Jelabiya tribe) are now Islamic. The architecture at St. Catherine’s today is still largely from this period, with some medieval (the old refectory and the bell tower particularly) and modern additions (the rather awful library and monastic cell block in modern concrete). The refec­tory graffiti has the names of Crusader pilgrims, some of whom went on to scratch their names in other ancient pilgrim sites: the same culprit’s handiwork being found scrawled on the walls of St. Antony’s Church by the Red Sea, too. Today, St. Catherine’s is unique among all Ortho­dox monasteries for having a small Fatimid mosque built within its grounds (now unused). The local Bedouin who serve the monastery themselves worship in their own mosque not far away from Jebel Musa.

Plate 71 Once the only way into the Sinai monastery was to be wound up in a wicker basket on a rope, into the entrance high up in the wall. Photo by John McGuckin

The basilical church with world- renowned 6th-century apsidal mosaics of the transfiguration is one of the most ven­erable buildings in all the Orthodox world, largely untouched from the time of its first building. The monastery collection of manuscripts and icons is undoubtedly the most ancient and important in the Orthodox world, too. The library not only had some of the most important manu­scripts of the New Testament; the Codex Sinaiticus for example (which was contro­versially removed from the site by Tischendorf, and which was probably one of the Pandects that Constantine the Great commissioned for the new churches of Palestine that he was building), but it is probably the most important single library in the world for the history of the binding of books. New manuscripts and icons are still coming to light, even in recent times, and in each instance it causes the textbooks to be rewritten. Sinai contains most of the known surviving pre-Iconoclastic icons that there are, and several of its old collec­tion (including the Sinai Christ, the Sinai St. Peter, the Virgin attended by soldier saints, and the Ladder of Divine Ascent) are among the greatest iconic art pieces in existence. Today, St. Catherine’s is one of the last surviving monasteries of a once flourishing circle of Greek-speaking ascetic sites spread like a pearl necklace across the Middle East.

Sinai, therefore, is justifiably a world heritage center, a veritable jewel box of ancient and wonderful things in terms of art, manuscripts, and relics; but the monks who still live there point also, with a deep sense of satisfaction, to something they hold as even more precious than their treasures, namely their fidelity to the ascetical evan­gelical life after so many unbroken centuries of witness in the wilderness, which is one of the chief raisons d’etre of Sinai as an Ortho­dox holy place apart from its geographical location. From the very beginning, the monks of Sinai kept up livelier relations with the Jerusalem patriarchate (of easier access) than with Alexandria, and eventu­ally this was reflected in the structures of ecclesiastical organization, for Sinai became a monastery under the care of the Jerusalem church. At the height of its flourishing it had Metochia, or dependent mona­steries and estates, in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Crete, Cyprus, Romania, and Con­stantinople, which supported it financially and ensured its effective independence dur­ing the long years when (like the Athonite communities) it had to buy the patronage of its Islamic overlords at great expense.

All these important supports eventually eroded, but not before Sinai had more or less successfully asserted its importance and its claims for autonomous governance over and against the patriarchate of Jerusalem, which itself had fallen onto hard times. It’s ecclesiastical independence (against the ini­tial grumblings of Jerusalem) was affirmed by the patriarchate of Constantinople in 1575, and confirmed again in 1782. Today, the monks of the community (only a few dozen still resident there) elect one of their own number as the abbot and also as the prospective archbishop of Sinai. The patri­arch of Jerusalem always has the right to perform the consecration (which fact, along with the peculiar smallness of the “Church of Sinai,” limits its complete claim to autoceph- aly). After that point, however, the arch­bishop, with his synaxis, or monastic assembly and council, entirely governs the affairs of the monastery-church. The arch­bishopric also includes the churches of Pharan and Raithu (by the Red Sea shore) which are now only tiny outlying parish cen­ters, but which were once monasteries of great repute in their own right. Sinai is thus the smallest independent church ofthe entire Orthodox world: a unique and special instance, poised between autocephalous and autonomous condition. The charnel house at Sinai contains the bones of its many saints and ascetics, piled up rank on rank. As a monastic of the community recently said while introducing visitors to it: “Although we have one of the world’s most ancient libraries on site, this is the real library where a Christian must learn about life.”

SEE ALSO: Iconography, Styles of; Monasticism

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Galey, J. (2003) Katherinenkloster auf dem Sinai. Stuttgart: Belser.

Nelson, R. S. and Collins, K. M. (eds.) (2006) Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons from Sinai. Los Angeles: J. P. Getty Museum.

Rossi, C. (2006) The Treasures of the Monastery of Saint Catherine. Vercelli, Italy: White Star Press.

Soskice, J. M. (2009) The Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels. London: Chatto and Windus.

Walsh, C. (2007) The Cult of St. Katherine of Alexandria in Early Medieval Europe. Aldershot: Ashgate Press.

Weitzmann, K. (1973) Illustrated Manuscripts at Saint Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai. Collegeville, MN: St. John’s University Press. Weitzmann, K. (1976) The Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai: The Icons. Princeton: Princeton University Press.