Coptica v. 16 2017

88 Mark N. Swanson

The Penitent Convert

If the Life and Miracles of Anbā Ruways include stories in which women are portrayed as having dangerous seductive power, the Life and Miracles of Marqus al-Anṭūnī include very different stories about women: this time, women who had probably converted to Islam (whether actively or along with fathers or husbands) but then repented of it, who sought out the saint to receive assurance of forgiveness, and who then went on to become martyrs. 34 One of them came to the Monastery of St. Antony disguised in the dress of a monk; she called herself “Michael.” 35 The shaykh Marqus immediately grasped that “Michael” was a woman; when eventually his disciples caught on to this as well, they were scandalized at her presence among them. She was distressed, but Marqus reminded her of the story of the penitent woman at the house of Simon the Pharisee, about whose presence Jesus’s disciples had complained. 36 Indeed, Marqus in a sense reenacted the biblical story and said to her: “Your sins are forgiven you.” She wept—and anointed Marqus’s feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 37 Soon the news that a woman was present among them spread through the monastery. The brothers seized her, exposed her secret before the altar, and expelled her from the monastery. But the shaykh Marqus saw her patience and encouraged her, saying: “Go, O Michael, to Cairo ( Miṣr ), and do not fear, for the Lord has prepared martyrdom for you there.” Indeed she returned to Cairo, and was one of the first in what became a list of 49 martyrs of the era. 38 Marqus al-Anṭūnī was well known for his compassion towards sinners— including many Christians who had converted to Islam and who then repented of it. He joyfully received these majrūḥīn , these “wounded” people (as they are regularly called in the texts). He pronounced the forgiveness of their sins and sent them on to the next phase of their lives: whether that of public confession of their return to Christianity and possible martyrdom; or to normal lives in the world, but as Christians; or to the monastic life. 39 Perhaps what is especially striking here is that Marqus received these penitents immediately, without long periods of preparation and testing, and even—as far as we can tell from the texts—without any 34 See a summary in Mark N. Swanson, “‘Our Father Abba Mark’: Marqus al-Anṭūnī and the Construction of Sainthood in Fourteenth-Century Egypt,” in Eastern Crossroads: Essays on Medieval Christian Legacy , ed. Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2007), 217-28, here pp. 225-26. 35 MS Monastery of St. Paul, hist. 115, ff. 61r-63r (Miracle #8). 36 Luke 7:36-50. 37 MS Monastery of St. Paul, hist. 115, ff. 61r-62r. 38 Ibid., ff. 62v-63r. On the forty-nine martyrs, see Swanson, Coptic Papacy , 115-17, 133- 34. 39 See the summary in Swanson, “Our Father Abba Mark,” 224-27.