Illuminating the Scriptorium: The St. Michael Collection and Monastic Book Production in the Fayyum Oasis, Egypt during the Ninth and Tenth Centuries

In 1910, a group of Egyptian farmers claimed they had discovered forty-seven Coptic manuscripts in a stone vat outside the village of al-Hamuli of the Fayyum Oasis. Known today as the St. Michael Collection (after the Monastery of St. Michael), the manuscripts were sold in 1911 to collector J. Pierpont Morgan. Unique for the number and quality of the manuscripts as well as for the preservation of their original bindings and paintings, the collection is one of the most important in the Morgan Library and Museum in New York. Produced between 822 and 914 CE, the collection includes compilations of martyrologies and hagiographies; smaller, single hagiographic and homiletic texts; Bible lectionaries; and other selections of scriptures from the Old and New Testaments. The colophons provide rare, detailed information about the scribes, artists, donors, and production locations of the manuscripts. Compared to contemporary Egyptian manuscripts, which were often bound in wooden book covers and were rarely decorated, the St. Michael Collection embodies a costly investment of time and money on the part of artisans and donors. While these manuscripts may represent a portion of one or more monastic libraries, scholarship on the St. Michael Collection has not addressed how and why the manuscripts were produced for their extended monastic community. This dissertation investigates a broad spectrum of evidence-literary texts, colophons, and paintings-to address questions of manuscript production and use. This investigation also emphasizes the material culture associated with the manuscripts. As objects, some of the manuscripts likely served the performance of the recitation of the liturgy. As a library, the collection appears to represent a textual preservation project on behalf of the monastic community in the region near a Monastery of St. Michael. Textual and pictorial evidence also reveals, through sustained analysis, formal and consistent book production centers in the Fayyum Oasis. These discussions substantially enhance our understanding of the economic aspects of book production and functions of monastic libraries. Using methods of art history, codicology, paleography, social network analysis, and material and cultural studies, this thesis illuminates the vibrancy of monastic book culture in medieval Egypt and provides avenues for future research on monastic economy, manuscripts studies, and the study of Egyptian Christian art.