The Greek Orthodox monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai (mod. Gebel Musa, Egypt) was located at a site sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims, where, according to tradition, the biblical prophet Moses ascended to bring down the Ten Commandments (Ex. 19-20).
The site began to attract Christian monks at an early date. In addition to its biblical associations, it was believed that the body of the martyr Catherine of Alexandria (d. 307) had been miraculously transported there. By the late fourth century it had a cenobitic community and several small churches; in the sixth century, the Byzantine emperor Justinian I had the present church and surrounding walls constructed to protect the monks from Bedouin raiders. Following the Islamic conquests of the seventh century, a provision in the testament attributed to Muhammad protected the monastery, relieving it from the payment of taxes. Western interest in the monastery increased after Abbot Symeon, a Greek originating from Sicily, visited France in 1025, depositing relics of St. Catherine at Rouen and successfully diffusing the veneration of the saint in the West. Western pilgrims began to visit Sinai via the ports of Alexandria and Gaza.
After the First Crusade (1096-1099) and the resultant establishment of the kingdom of Jerusalem in Palestine, such visits increased, although the monastery remained outside Frankish-controlled territory throughout the period
1099-1291. A handbook for pilgrims, probably written during the reign of King Fulk of Jerusalem (1131-1143), alludes to the monks’ illustrious reputation and widespread fame, on account of which no one dared to harm them. Nonetheless, when King Baldwin I wished to visit them during his expedition to ‘Aqaba, the monks dissuaded him, fearing Muslim reprisals. The monastery’s visitors included the future Templar master Philip of Milly, who was given a relic of St. Catherine.
The abbot of Mount Sinai, who also had the rank of a Greek Orthodox archbishop, was the only Orthodox prelate whom the Franks recognized as a full diocesan bishop; he was a suffragan of the Latin metropolitan of Petra. The abbot and monks nonetheless continued to recognize the jurisdiction of the Orthodox patriarchs of Constantinople. Euthymios, the Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem, was resident in Sinai, dying there in 1222. The monastery had properties and daughter houses in areas under Latin control, such as Acre (mod. ‘Akko, Israel), Laodikeia (al-Lathqiyah, Syria), Antioch (mod. Antakya, Turkey), Crete, and Cyprus, as well as two confraternities in Constantinople.
By 1291 Frankish rule had ended in Palestine, Syria, and Constantinople, but continued in Crete (to 1571) and Cyprus (1668). On account of this, the abbots of Mount
Sinai recognized papal jurisdiction, requesting the popes throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to protect their properties in Venetian Crete and Lusignan Cyprus. In Crete during this period, Latin nobles and prelates damaged and occupied the monastery’s properties, forcing the monks to pay tithes and other exactions, in violation of the provisions of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and notwithstanding the attempts of Honorius III, Gregory IX, and John XXII to protect the monastery. In Cyprus the monastery had the church of St. Symeon in Famagusta (the chief port of the island), oratories in deserted areas of the island, and an annual income of one gold pound from market taxes. The monastery exported foodstuffs and clothing from Crete, but piracy was a problem, and in 1328 the pope ordered the punishment of John Saut, a Latin preying on the monastery’s ships.
-Nicholas Coureas
Bibliography
Amantos, Konstantinos, Zvvtofioq laropia vig lepag Movrjg wv Eiva (Thessaloniki: Etaireia Makedonikon Spoudon, 1953).
Coureas, Nicholas, “The Orthodox Monastery of Mt. Sinai and Papal Protection of its Cretan and Cypriot Properties,” in Autour de la Premiere Croisade: Actes du Colloque de la Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East (Clermont-Ferrand, 22-25juin 1995), ed.
Michel Balard (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1996), pp. 474-483.
Hamilton, Bernard, The Latin Church in the Crusader States: The Secular Church (London: Ashgate, 1980).
Hofman, George, “Lettere pontifice edite et inedite,”
Orientalia Christiana Periodica 17 (1951), 298-303.
World History
