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The Coptic White Monastery (), also The Monastery of Abba Shenouda () and The Athribian Monastery () is a Coptic Orthodox monastery named after Saint Shenoute. It is located near the cities of Tahta and Sohag, and about south-east of the Red Monastery.
The name of the monastery is derived from the colour of the white limestone of its outside walls. The White Monastery is architecturally similar to the Red Monastery. The monastery had one of the largest Coptic libraries ever known with over 1,000 codices of which 10% survive.
Following the death of Shenouda, the monastic community of the White Monastery continued strong throughout the 5th century under the leadership of Saint Wissa () and later Saint Zenobius. However, the monastery began slowly to decline following the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 641. The state of decline can be attributed in part to the heavy taxes that the monasteries in Egypt had to endure. Such taxes put a great number of monasteries out of existence.
The monastery served as a host for Armenians monks in the 11th and the 12th centuries. This is indicated in the inscriptions found on the paintings of the central apse of the church, which date between 1076 and 1124. Among these Armenian monks was the artist Theodore of Kaysun, the Armenian Vizier Bahram, who became a monk after having been banished from his office during the Caliphate of the Fatimid caliph al-Hafiz (1135-1137). In 1168, the monastery was attacked by Shirkuh.
The monastery underwent major restorations between 1202 and 1259. In the 13th century, in the work attributed to Abu al-Makarim, it is mentioned that the monastery included a keep, which was probably built during the Middle Ages to protect the monastery from the attacks of the desert's . Abu al-Makarim also tells of an enclosure wall around the monastery within which a garden full of all sorts of trees existed. The lack of literary manuscripts after the 14th century indicates that the monastery was in an advanced state of decline from that time onwards. According to al-Maqrizi, who called it both the "White Monastery" and the "Monastery of St Shenoute", mentioned that in the 13th century, it lay in ruins and only the church remained in use.
In 1907, the church complex experienced another repair which included the removal of the encrustation of brick work and the undercovering of the doorways. Then in the 1980s more restoration work took place on the walls and the columns of the church.
The original three apses are of magnificent construction. Each contains two registers of columns separated by a decorative frieze and surmounted by architraves. Between the columns there lie the niches. The horizontal cross-section of the niches in each register alternates between rectangular and circular. The semidome of each is decorated with a beautiful design. Above the registers lies the majestic semidome. There paintings can be distinguished in these semidomes. The one in the central apse has a painting of the Christ Pantocrator and the four evangelists. In the northern apse, there is a depiction of the dormition of the Virgin Mary. The southern apse has a representation of the resurrection with the two Mary's and two angels.
The church complex has several annexes along the east and south walls. The most significant is the great hall that runs alongside the south wall. This probably served the function of a women's chamber in the early days. It has a chamber at each of its east and west ends. The west chamber contains a well and it underwent reconstruction in the early 19th century. There are also two chambers south of the central apse and a third one to the north. On the south side, one chamber is rectangular with a font which is now used as a baptistery, and the second is circular with niches. On the north side, the chamber is square. There is another rectangular chamber west of the circular chamber and it is divided in half by two projecting buttresses. There is a variety of building material employed in the construction of the church complex. This reflects the different stages that the monastery went through since the time of its foundation. The outer walls are of white limestone set in mortar with no bonding. They are sloped six degrees from vertical on the outside (original construction). The gargoyles and the door lintels are also of limestone, with the doorjambs being made of red granite. The source of these limestones is probably from ruins of nearby temples, which Saint Shenouda the Archimandrite contributed to their demise figuratively and literally. The original nave columns are made of marble or granite with few later ones being of red bricks. Many of these columns are no longer standing. The paving of the nave is of limestone or granite slabs.
The original sanctuary is now roofed with vaults of burnt bricks; originally, it had a wood roof. The nave, isles, and the great south hall (lateral narthex) are now without a roof; originally they had wood gabled roofs with galleries atop the isles. The wall between the exo-narthex and the body of the original church is of limestone. The great wall that defines the western boundary of the current church is made up of red bricks which encase the original columns and arches. This now is covered with a cream-color stucco layer. The four arches carrying the squinches of the central, original, sanctuary dome are also made up of red bricks except for the one toward the east which is of marble construction.
Today the library is scattered all over the world. Codices were dismembered with individual folios ending up in different libraries or museums. At times, even an individual folio ended up in different libraries which were thousands of miles apart. Serious effort has been undertaken to artificially regroup these codices from their Diaspora with photographic means. Mgr. Louis Théophile Lefort, a coptologist of Louvain, made the first comprehensive attempt toward achieving this monumental goal. However, his collection was a tragic victim of World War II. Currently, this task has been taken up by Tito Orlandi and his associates in the Sapienza University of Rome. There, they formed the Corpus dei Manoscritti Copti Letterari. They were able to identify hundreds of separate codices with the aid of the prior works that scholars had previously done.
The library contents, as mentioned above, has adorned many libraries and museums around the world from as early as the 19th century. The following is a partial list of those places that possess such fragments:
The ancient library of the White Monastery is rich in many categories such as biblical, hagiographical, liturgical, etc. This provides the researcher with good knowledge about what the monks were reading and what they were allowed to read at different stages of the monastery's development. However, the early times are not too well represented in the surviving fragments. This can be either attributed to their frequent use or simply that they were victims of time and of the decline of the monastery in later times. The dialect of these manuscripts were predominantly in Sahidic Coptic, which was perfected in its literary form by Saint Shenouda the Archimandrite. There were also some bilingual manuscripts. The early ones were in Sahidic Coptic and Greek language, while the later ones had Sahidic Coptic and Arabic language. The writing materials employed were mostly parchment, because of its prevalence, but some of the later ones were found on paper.
The first category, and most abundant, is the Biblical manuscripts. Nearly every book of the Old Testament, including the Deuterocanonical Books is represented. The only exception is some of the historical books, which were always in short supply in monasteries. The New Testament, on the other hand is represented in its entirety though in a fragmentary shape.
A second category is the apocryphal Gospels, Acts, and Biblical lives that were frequently read in Egyptian monasteries. These include the Gospel of the Twelve, Gospel of Bartholomew, Acts of Thomas, Acts of Pilate, Life of the Virgin Mary, and History of Joseph the Carpenter.
A third category is the historical manuscripts, which are rare in any of the Coptic libraries found thus far. However, in the White Monastery one finds a substantial part of an ecclesiastical history manuscript. That manuscript deals with the history of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria in the 4th and 5th centuries. In addition, there are several fragments of codices that record the acts of the great Councils of Nicaea and Ephesus.
Another important category found in the library is the hagiographic texts. These are found in relative abundance in all monastic libraries, and the White Monastery is no exception. They are primarily intended for the spiritual edification of the monks rather than being accurate historical records of the saints. They include acts and related texts of many martyrs such as Saint Colluthus the Physician, Saints Cosmas and Damian, Saint Mercurius, Saint Psote, Saint Theodore, Saint Victor, and many others. There are also the lives of many important saints of the Egyptian Church like Saint Anthony, Saint Athanasius, Saint Pachomius and his disciples, Saint Samuel the Confessor, and Saint Shenouda the Archimandrite to name just a few.
The richest and most significant category available is the writings of the fathers. This library has yielded a great number of manuscripts, preserving texts of the composition of Egyptians writers, as well as Coptic language translation of Greek language writings of Church Fathers. The most significant part of it is that of the remarkable works of Saint Shenouda the Archimandrite. Other writings includes those of Saint Wissa's sermons, the writings of Pachomius and his disciples, and the Apophthegmata Patrum. Other texts of original Coptic composition include those of Constantine of Asyut, John of Burulus, and Rufus of Shotep. The group of Coptic translations of Greek writings includes those of Saint Peter of Alexandria, Saint Athanasius, Saint Theophilus, Saint Cyril the Great, and Saint Dioscorus. The Greek translations of non-Coptic Fathers include Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, Saint John Chrysostom, and Saint Severus of Antioch. Works of other authors are also found in that collection.
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