December 30, 2002
One of the two reasons we came to this area is the Convent of St. Catherine's. Since the third century, small monastic communities settled on and around the holy Mount Sinai, fleeing Roman persecution and revering the site of the burning bush and the delivery of the ten commandments. The monastery surviving to this day began as a chapel built in 330 by Helena, the mother of Constantine, first of a long line of protectors.
The monastery's official name is the Church of the Transfiguration, memorializing Christ's miraculous transformation before the eyes of Peter, James, and John along with the appearance of two of Mt. Sinai's Biblical denizens, Moses and Elijah (Matthew 17).
St. Catherine’s monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai, Egypt.
The monastery has come to be known as St. Catherine's because in the 7th century, monks discovered on a nearby mountain top the remains of St. Catherine, an early Egyptian Christian martyr. In the early 4th century, she was tortured and killed on a spiked wheel; yet, not only did she refuse to recant her faith, her arguments and bravery were said to convert members of the Emperor's family. Like Saint George, Saint Catherine was brought back to Europe in stories by the Crusaders, and subsequently became a major Western saint.
In the middle of the 6th century, Emperor Justinian fortified the monastery, and brought 200 families from Anatolia and Greece (and we were told Romania) to protect and serve the monastery and its pilgrims, who have been flocking here since the 4th century.
During Mohammed's rise to power in Saudi Arabia (and nearly 20 years before the Arab conquest of the Sinai), monks went to visit him and ask for his protection. He granted their request, and the letter he wrote (copies of which we viewed in the monastery's museum) served them very well over the years.
The Crusaders also offered their services to the area, even founding a special order to protect St. Catherine's pilgrims. The ensuing Mameluke regime was not so friendly, but the monastery survived to be protected and well-favored by the next rulers, the Turkish Ottomans. During "Napoleon's Egyptian adventure" (as the tourist pamphlet calls it), St. Catherine's received a number of renovations and proclamations of protection.
Today, the natural landscape has remained much the same, but the religious life has changed dramatically in the Sinai. The inhabitants of the peninsula, once almost entirely Christian, are now almost entirely Muslim, including the offspring of the families brought by Justinian. Over time, they intermarried with local nomads and became known as the Jebeliya Bedouins, and they still serve the monastery and the pilgrims who visit it and Mt. Sinai. The once-thriving community of monks (once in the hundreds) has now shrunk to twenty-two.
We arrived as the monastery opened to the public in the morning, hoping to deliver greetings from friends in Jerusalem to several of the monks. We found one, Fr. George, who graced us with a pass written in Greek to see several parts of the monastery reserved for special groups. Photographs are not allowed in most parts, so we tried to burn as much of the place into our memory as possible (and to buy postcards and tourist brochures).
We spoke with one of the monks, a Fr. Justin who was born and raised in El Paso, Texas, of all places. He was most interested to hear news from Palestine, particularly regarding Fr. Iustinus in Nablus whom he had met on a visit to there during the first Intifada.
7th century ceiling mosaic of the Transfiguration at St. Catherine’s monastery in Sinai, Egypt.
One of our special passes was to see the sixth century ceiling mosaic of the Transfiguration, sequestered back behind the iconostasis and guarded by Fr. Nikolai. It's hard to believe that, 1400 years later, such a thing still shines as brightly as it does.
The transplanted burning bush sits across from the monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai, Egypt.
Behind the apse is the Helena-era chapel built on the site of the Burning Bush. Most Orthodox altars are built over relics - this one is built over the roots of the Burning Bush, which has been dug up and transplanted nearby. According to our guidebook, the bush grows nowhere else in the world, and cuttings from it never survive. That, and the requests of monks and tour guides, didn't stop the hoards of tourist/pilgrims from ripping pieces from it, though (amazingly it was very crowded - we haven't been to a crowded tourist site in a very long time).
7th century icon of Christ at St. Catherine monastery in Sinai, Egypt.
Our second "secret" pass was to view the recently-opened museum, elegantly displaying a fraction of the monastery's icons and manuscripts. Due to its location and various protectors, the monastery has a collection of icons that avoided destruction from all the iconoclastic controversies. So they have a unique collection, unbroken from the sixth century. We were both especially moved by a luminous seventh century icon of Christ, amazingly well preserved over the centuries. There were, of course, icons of St. Catherine, but most unique were the icons of the Theotokos of the Burning Bush. Since the episode of Exodus 3 marked a theophany (appearance of God), it has been seen by the Orthodox tradition as a figure of the Virgin Mary, whose womb witnessed the theophany in incarnation. Unfortunately, we couldn't find any postcards of it.
Icon of St. Catherine at St. Catherine monastery in Sinai, Egypt.
The manuscripts here are impressive, too, second only to the Vatican in number and value of holdings. Ancient parchment writings and elaborate illuminated manuscripts in perhaps a dozen languages were on display in the museum. What is sad, though, is what is missing: in 1865, the Monastery lent the Codex Sinaiticus (a fourth century Greek manuscript of the Bible) to a German scholar on behalf of the Russian Czar. It was never returned, and later the British Museum bought it from the Soviets (for 100,000 pounds). Not surprisingly, the British Museum has not returned it either.
We left the monastery just in time, as the crowds became overwhelming, and headed back to our Bedrock bungalow to begin napping. Tomorrow's an early day.