Coptica v. 16 2017

72 Mark N. Swanson

A person named Fakhr al-Dawlah told us a story about this father [Patriarch Matthew], and said: “I’m telling you the truth, my brothers. [I had fallen ill], the death agonies had taken hold of me, and I died. I did not find this father [Matthew] attending me at my death, and I did not sense [his presence] until I saw him in the place of fear and judgment, after the angels had seized my soul and had set me before the Throne of the Lord Christ. I saw the Lord Christ—to whom be glory!—as he was gesturing to the angels who had been assigned to me to bring forth the book of my sins and to chide me without mercy for every sin that I had forgotten or that I had not confessed. And in that place I saw fear, utter dread, and an unquenchable fire, so that, from the magnitude of what I saw I immediately fell down in terror. I was seeking someone to raise me up—but did not find anyone. But then I saw this father [Matthew] raise me up and ask the Lord Christ to return my soul to me again, so that I might repent of my sins which I had committed. The Lord Christ [responded to] and did not reject this father’s petition on my behalf, and said to him: ‘I have heard you with regard to this person and have given him to you. Teach him from now on no longer to sin, lest evil befall him.’ And when the Lord Christ had said this to this father, I came to and regained wakefulness, stood up as I was, and found that my soul had returned to me. Then I praised God, and became convinced of the powerful prayer that belonged to this father [Matthew]…” Could the narrator of this account be the same Fakhr al-Dawlah we encountered earlier, the penitent convert who became a monk of the Monastery of St. Antony? It wouldn’t have to be. Fakhr al-Dawlah, “Pride of the State,” was a common honorific among the Copts, so we may well dealing with different individuals. On the other hand, it strikes me that this story from the Life of Patriarch Matthew might fill a lacuna in our overall picture of Fakhr al-Dawlah the penitent convert—in that it suggests a possible occasion or motivation for his repentance. Why , finally, did Fakhr al-Dawlah ibn al-Muʾtaman repent, abandon family, wealth, and position, and become a monk? A near-fatal illness and a terrifying vision of Judgment could well have provided the impetus. Be that as it may, we can certainly say that elements of the story of the repentance of Fakhr al-Dawlah ibn al-Muʾtaman are found in at least two and perhaps three of the most important saints’ lives of the period. This suggests to me that the story has a basis in fact, and that it got the attention of the Coptic community. As the biographer of Marqus al-Anṭūnī put it (in

1235-1894) , ed. Antoine Khater and O.H.E. Khs-Burmester (Cairo: Société d’Archéologie Copte, 1970), 150-51 (Arabic text; my translation).