A circle of Egyptian bishops at the end of Roman rule (c.600): Texts and contexts

This article explores the explosion of evidence which occurs around the creation of the Severan episcopate in Egypt. Drawing together a number of modern studies, it first sets out the known careers and corpora of the patriarch Damian of Alexandria (577-c. 606) and several of his prominent bishops: John of Paralos, Constantine of Assiut, Rufus of Shotep, John of Hermopolis, Pesynthius of Koptos, and Abraham of Hermonthis. It then argues that, even if their output contributed to a process of heightened provincialisation in this period, the most immediate and important context for appreciating that output is not a grand political or cultural separatism, but the bishops’ need both to legitimise and to distinguish their new Church in the face of Chalcedonian competition.