Who Were the Coptic Saints?

The origins and influence of Coptic saints begins with Ormus, an Egyptian Serapic priest who was converted by St. Mark around 42 AD, and blended ancient Persian, Egyptian, and Jewish wisdom with Christian principles to reform Egyptian doctrines, founding the Coptic Church in Alexandria. St. Mark, a North African Levite, established this church and the Catechetical School of Alexandria by the mid-second century, a hub of intellectual culture teaching theology, sciences, and arts amidst Alexandria’s Great Library. The Coptic Church, using the Coptic language, split from mainstream Christendom in 451 AD over theological disputes at the Council of Nicaea, rejecting monophysitism accusations. Origen, a key figure at the Catechetical School (185–253 AD), possibly born to a Christian martyr father, Leonides, later founded the Christian School of Caesarea, becoming a theological authority; some modern Templar narratives may conflate him with Ormus, suggesting a lineage of “Ormusiens” guarding purified Egyptian wisdom until 1118.

Further Coptic saints include St. Paul of Thebes, a hermit sustained by a palm tree and a raven’s bread in the Theban desert, and St. Anthony the Great, deemed the father of monasticism, who organized followers into communities based on Christ’s teachings of poverty and charity, influencing monastic growth across Egypt and the Levant. Legend recounts St. Anthony seeking St. Paul, finding him dead on a later visit, and burying him with the aid of lions, later passing his staff to St. Macarius on his deathbed. This encounter, symbolizing a transfer of wisdom, is depicted in David Teniers the Younger’s 1660s painting, reflecting Masonic and Rosicrucian themes of knowledge passing from the Old to New World, tying Coptic saints to a broader esoteric tradition rooted in ancient and Christian synthesis.

The meeting of St. Anthony and St. Paul by David Teniers the Younger