ALEXANDRIA, PATRIARCHATE OF: One of
the most important episcopal sees of the early Church, traditionally believed to have been founded by the evangelist Mark. It originally had metropolitan jurisdiction over the whole of Egypt, and gradually became recognized as holding an even wider or patriarchal authority, next to that of Rome, until Constantinople took second place in the fourth century. For its early history in this connection, see Patriarch. The rise of heresies and divisions in the Church, so zealously combated by famous incumbents of this see, such as Athanasius and Cyril, led to schisms. The Monophysites contested the see with the orthodox or occupied it through a large part of the fifth and sixth centuries, and from the seventh century the Melchites and Copts continued the same conflict. The Coptic patriarchs maintained close relations with the Jacobite patriarchs of Antioch, and enjoyed the larger share of the favor of the Mohammedan rulers. In the fourteenth century, however, they as well as their Melchite rivals were subjected to severe persecutions. When the city was conquered by the crusaders in 1365, the Melchite patriarch was living in Constantinople under the protection of the patriarch of that see, whose influence continually increased in Alexandria, until the Alexandrian patriarchs came to be regularly chosen either from the clergy of Constantinople or from Alexandrian clergy resident there.
The seat of the patriarchate was for a long while in Old Cairo, but in modern times the incumbent
Alexandria
THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
has usually resided in Constantinople. Since 1672 he has had only four metropolitans under him; namely, those of Ethiopia (purely titular), Cairo (the former Memphis), Damietta (transferred from Pelusium), and Rosetta. The Coptic see was transferred to Old Cairo still earlier, under Christodoulos (1045-76), and claims jurisdiction over thirteen bishoprics. See Coptic Church; Egypt.
ALEXANDRIA, SCHOOL OF.
Origin (§ 1).
Its Development from Hellenism and Judaism (§ 2).
Christian Modifications (§ 3).
Significance and Achievements (§ 4).
Organization (§ 5).
Later Developments (§ 6).
Representatives of the Later School (§ 7).
The term " School of Alexandria " is used in two different senses : (1) The catechetical school was an institution which grew up not later than the last half of the second century, and lasted to the end of the fourth, with a regular succession of teachers like the schools of philosophy. (2) By the same name is also understood a group of theologians of the fourth and fifth centuries, the most important of whom was Cyril of Alexandria. They were in general opposition to the school of Antioch (q.v.), and were the progenitors of Monophysitism and of the anti-Nestorian interpretation of the decrees of Chalcedon, thus originating in the order of intellectual development the decisions of the third and fifth councils. It will be convenient to treat both meanings of the term together.
Nothing certain is known of the origin of Christianity in Alexandria, but it is noteworthy that tradition refers the first preaching
i. Origin, of the Gospel there and the foundation of a group of ascetic philosophers to one and the same period, and practically to the same man, Mark the Evangelist — which indicates that the school dates from the earliest days of Alexandrian Christianity. At the end of the second century, it emerges into light as an established institution under the teacher Pantaenus, thus confirming the observation, generally true, that Christianity adapted itself everywhere to local characteristics. The oldest Gnostic schools are met with in Egypt, and the oldest school found in direct relation to the Church (Justin, Tatian, and others had what might be called private schools) is that of Alexandria. If one may judge from the later period, in which the relations between the school and the Church, between the bishop and the teacher, were frequently strained, the school grew only gradually into close connection with the Church; but the Alexandrian Church itself shows, at the transition from the second to the third century, a freer, less rigidly orthodox habit of thought, which gave place to the settled Catholic forms only in the episcopate of Demetrius, under Caracalla and Elagabalus.
The catechetical school had forerunners in the Hellenistic " Museum " on one side, and in the Jewish schools (batte midrashoi) on the other. The development of Helleno-Judaic learning, as seen in Philo, is a direct step to the Christian, which took up its inheritance. The speculations of the Egyp-
tian Gnostics, the schools of Basilides and Valentinus, and those of the Church theologians proceed from the same source. Its theology is the science of interpreting the written documents; 2. Its De- it is extracted from the divine oracles velopment by means of the exegetic-pneumatic from Hel- method. But access to the highest lenism and secrets is possible only by passing Judaism, through various anterooms, designated on one side by the different disciplines of Greek philosophy, and on the other by special divine revelations. This progressive enlightenment corresponds to the constitution of nature and the human organism, with their long course of progressive development. The path thus marked out leads, however, naturally to apologetics, just as the preparatory study, in metaphysics and ethics, in knowledge and in divine love, leads to the laying of a foundation for the theological gnosis. All this has appeared already in Philo; and so has the essentially Platonic attitude toward the whole world of thought, the energetic effort to surpass Plato's idea by a hypernoeton (thus offering religion access in the form of the transcendental to a lofty region peculiarly its own), and the alchemistic process with the Bible by which it is made to yield not only the highest gnosis but also, when interpreted literally and morally, the theology of the preparatory stages.
The Christian school made no radical change in this way of looking at things; but it modified the earlier views by giving the revelation of God 3. Christian in Christ precedence over the Old Tes- Modifica- tament law, which it placed practically tions. on a level with Greek philosophy, and by accepting the Pauline-Johannean conception of the appearance of the Godhead (the Logos) on earth. The mystery of God coming down to his creature, or of the deification of the created spirit, now became the central thought of theology, and served to strengthen the long-existing conception of the essential affinity of the created spirit with its creator. The fundamental question whether the return of souls to God is only an apparent return (since really all the time they are in him), or a strictly necessary natural process, or the historical consequence of a historical event (the Incarnation), was never satisfactorily answered by the teachers of the catechetical school. The Alexandrian orthodox teachers are distinguished from the heretical by their serious attempt to save the freedom of the creature, and thus to place a boundary between God and man and to leave some scope for history; but the attitude of the Christian Gnostic, which Origen praises as the highest, leaves room neither for the historic Christ nor for the Logos, in fact for no mediator at all, but conceives everything as existing in calm immanence and blessedness — while this very teacher, as soon as he placed himself on one of the numerous steps which lie between man as a natural being and man as a blessed spirit, became the theologian of redemption, atonement, and mediation.
The catechetical school of Alexandria has a great significance as well for the internal history of the Church as for its relation to the world outside. It furnished the Church with a dogmatic theology; it