The Beginnings of a Second Article on the Throne of St. Mark

Well, I was just talking about writing a second book when out of the blue, Imad Boles, President of the British Coptic Association, gave me the inspiration for completing the concept that I started with my first academic article - i.e. broadening our understanding of the Venetian plunder of the Church of St. Mark in the Boucolia to include (a) the throne of St. Mark and (b) the body of Athanasius.

In other words, the Venetians didn't just take the body of St. Mark and a few minor relics.  There is good reason why tradition holds that TWO ships were used to take away all the booty.

It is because of Boles' comments at Roger Pearson's site that I think I could tentatively make the case that EVEN THOUGH the theft isn't mentioned in the histories of Eutychius or Severus (both of whom lived relatively close to the time of the plunder) the silence MIGHT be attributed to the catastrophic effect that the loss of these relics had on the community.

You see Dioscorus helped clarify that in the original Arabic of Eutychius the Coptic group which revolt immediately after 828 CE (the year of the plunder of the Church of St. Mark) were called Bima:

Eutychius in his Annals (written in Arabic) calls them البيما او اهل البيما, which could be translated “the Bima or the people of the Bima”. He says the word name البيما/Bima comes from a Coptic word that means “ نسل الاربعين “ , i.e. “the descendants of the forty”. The Latin translation (1658) renders the translation: “quadraginia virorum progenies”. St Michael the Syrian in his Chronicle (which is absolutely important in this history) calls the them Biamaye as Bat Ye’or in her The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam spells it. It may be that Biamaye is the Syriac form of the Arabic Bima/Pima.

It was then I wondered whether the 'people of the Bima' might be an Arabic translation of the Coptic βῆμα - or a reference to the Coptic devotion to the throne that was stolen in 828 CE. Boles acknowledges that my suggestion might be a very viable possibility:

The English-Bohairic Dictionary by the Shenouda the Archimandrite Society gives the following meaning for bema: “(Gk); m. Step, pace; raised place or tribune, tribunal of a magistrate.” This might have been preserved in Arabic as you suggested.

In other words, Eutychius quite possibly DOES reference the loss of the throne but DELIBERATELY obscures its meaning. Those of the Bima are in fact 'those of the throne' - i.e. the Copts who were so incensed with the circumstances of the plunder of the sacred relics associated with their Patriarch St. Mark that they rose up in rebellion.

I would even go so far as to tentatively suggest that the events of 828 CE represented the most important turning point in the history of Christianity in Egypt. After the loss of the relics and the subsequent revolts of the Copts, sealed the fate of the community for the next millenium and beyond.

I think I could develop a case that the throne of St. Mark and its theft in 828 CE can be determined to have had a major effect on the history of the Coptic tradition. The question of why it is never mentioned in the history of the period can begun to be corrected with subsequent research.