religious life. Before it the Copts lived in their own semi-fortified quarters in Cairo or Old Cairo or in country or desert Dairs (Ders). Walls and gates were now thrownPresent state of the church. down or disused: the Copts began to mix and live freely among the Moslems, their children to frequent the same schools, and the people to abandon their distinctively Christian dress, names, customs and even religion. Freedom and prosperity threatened to injure the Church more than centuries of persecution. Many of the younger generation of Copts began openly to boast their indifference and even scepticism: in the large towns churches came to be too often frequented only by the old or the uneducated, confession and fasts fell into neglect and the number of communicants diminished; while the facility of divorce granted by Islam occasioned many perversions from among the Copts to that religion. On the other hand the necessity of resistance to these tendencies and of reform from within was strongly realized. Unfortunately, the institution of a lay council of eminent churchmen, which has been formed for the patriarch and for every bishop in his own diocese, has led to prolonged struggles and on one occasion to a serious crisis, in which the patriarch and the metropolitan of Alexandria were for a while banished to the desert. A principal object of these lay councils is to control the financial and legal powers vested in patriarch and bishops—powers which have often been greatly abused. Other objects are (1) to provide Christian religious education in all Coptic schools and to raise these schools to a high standard in secular matters; (2) to promote the education of women; (3) to apply church revenues to the maintenance of churches and schools and to the better payment of the clergy, who are now often compelled to live on charity; (4) to ensure prompt administration of justice in ecclesiastical causes such as divorce, inheritance, &c.; and (5) to establish colleges for the efficient training of the clergy. Educated Copts remember the time when the church of Alexandria was as famous for learning as for zeal. They desire also to resist the serious encroachments of Roman Catholic, American Presbyterian, and other foreign missions upon their ancient faith. (A. J. B.)
Authorities.—(1) History and Religion: Johann Michael Wansleben (Vansleb), a Dominican and learned orientalist (1635–1679), Hist. de l’église d’Alexandrie (Paris, 1677), written at Cairo in 1672 and 1673 mainly from original native sources, and Nouvelle Relation . . . d’un voyage fait en Égypte, &c. (Paris, 1677 and 1698, Eng. trans., London, 1678); Eusèbe Renaudot the younger (1646–1720), Historia Patriarcharum Alexandrinorum (Paris, 1713); Abū Dakn (Josephus Abudacnus), Historia Jacobitarum (Oxford, 1675, Eng. trans. by Sir E. Sadleir, London, 1693); S. C. Malan, Original Documents of the Coptic Church (London, 1874); Denzinger, Ritus Orientalium (Würzburg, 1863); Hon. Robert Curzon, Visits to Monasteries in the Levant (London, 1849); J. M. Neale, Hist. of the Patriarchate of Alexandria (2 vols., ib., 1847), in the Hist. of the Holy Eastern Church, coloured by the writer’s Anglo-Catholic point of view; A. J. Butler, Ancient Coptic Churches of Egypt (Oxford, 1884); B. T. A. Evetts and Butler, Churches and Monasteries of Egypt, by Abū Sāleh (Oxford, 1895); E. Amélineau, Monuments pour servir à l’histoire de l’Égypte chrétienne aux IVe et Ve siècles, Coptic and Arabic documents published and translated for the first time, in Mém. de la mission archéolog. franç. au Caire, t. iv. (Paris, 1888), and Monuments . . . au IVe siècle in the Annales du musée Guimet, t. xvii. (Paris, 1889); P. Rohrbach, Die alexandrinischen Patriarchen (Berlin, 1891); Jullien, L’Égypte: souvenirs bibliques et chrétiens (Lille, 1891); Macaire, Histoire de l’église d’Alexandrie (Cairo, 1894); Porphyrius, The Christian East: Alexandrian Patriarchate (St Petersburg, 1898; in Russian); Strzygowski, Orient oder Rom? (Leipzig, 1901); De Bock, Matériaux pour servir à l’archéologie de l’Égypte chrétienne (St Petersburg, 1901); Kitab al Hulājī al Muķaddas (Cairo, 1902); A. Gayet, “Les Monuments coptes du musée de Boulaq,” in the Mém. miss. archéolog. franç. au Caire, t. iii. (Paris, 1889); id., L’Art copte (Paris, 1902); Horner, The Statutes of the Apostles (London, 1904); Egypt Exploration Fund Reports, section “Christian Egypt”; W. E. Crum, article “Koptische Kirche” in Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, 3. Aufl.; J. M. Fuller’s article “Coptic Church” in Smith’s Dictionary of Biography; A. J. Butler, The Arab Conquest of Egypt (Oxford, 1902); J. Leipoldt, Schenute von Atripe und die Entstehung des national-ägyptischen Christentums (Leipzig, 1903), Die Entstehung der koptischen Kirche (a valuable essay printed as the introduction to R. Haupt’s Katalog 5, Halle, 1905); B. T. A. Evetts, “The Patriarchal History of Severus” in Graffin’s Patrologia orientalis (Paris); J. Milne, A History of Egypt under Roman Rule (1898).
Literature.—See Crum’s article above referred to, his Catalogue of Coptic MSS. in the British Museum, and his annual reviews in the Archaeological Report of the Egypt Exploration Fund; J. Leipoldt in Geschichte der christlichen Literaturen des Orients (Leipzig, 1907); H. Junker, Koptische Poesie des zehnten Jahrhunderts, 1. Teil (Berlin, 1908); Archdeacon Dowling, The Egyptian Church (London, 1909).
Modern People.—E. W. Lane’s description of the Copts in his Modern Egyptians is interesting, but founded on imperfect information, and, moreover, coloured by prejudices in favour of the Moslems whom he studied with so much sympathy. See Klunzinger, Upper Egypt, pp. 61 et sqq.; also the last chapter of The Story of the Church of Egypt, by Mrs E. L. Butcher (1897), on the social life and customs.
COPYHOLD, in English law, an ancient form of land tenure,
legally defined as a “holding at the will of the lord according
to the custom of the manor.” Though nowadays of diminishing
practical importance, its incidents are historically interesting.
Its origin is to be found in the occupation by villani, or non-freemen,
of portions of land belonging to the manor of a feudal
lord. In the time of the Domesday survey the manor was in part
granted to free tenants, in part reserved by the lord himself
for his own uses. The estate of the free tenants is the freehold
estate of English law; as tenants of the same manor they
assembled together in manorial court or court baron, of which
they were the judges. The portion of the manor reserved for
the lord (the demesne, or domain) was cultivated by labourers
who were bound to the land (adscripti glebae). They could not
leave the manor, and their service was obligatory. These villani,
however, were allowed by the lord to cultivate portions of land
for their own use. It was a mere occupation at the pleasure of
the lord, but in course of time it grew into an occupation by
right, recognized first of all by custom and afterwards by law.
This kind of tenure is called by the lawyers villenagium, and it
probably marks a great advance in the general recognition of
the right when the name is applied to lands held on the same conditions
not by villeins but by free men. The tenants in villenage
were not, like the freeholders, members of the court baron, but
they appear to have attended in a humbler capacity, and to have
solicited the succession to the land occupied by a deceased father,
or the admission of a new tenant who had purchased the goodwill,
as it might be called, of the holding, paying for such favours
certain customary fines or dues. In relation to the tenants in
villenage, the court baron was called the customary court. The
records of the court constituted the title of the villein tenant,
held by copy of the court roll (whence the term “copyhold”);
and the customs of the manor therein recorded formed the real
property law applicable to his case.
Copyhold had long been established in practice before it was formally recognized by the law. At first it was in fact, as it is now in the fictitious theory of the law, a tenancy at will, for which none of the legal remedies of a freeholder were available. In the reign of Edward IV., however, it was held that a tenant in villenage had an action of trespass against the lord. In this way a species of tenant-right, depending on and strongly supported by popular opinion, was changed into a legal right. But it retained many incidents characteristic of its historical origin. The life of copyhold assurance, it is said, is custom. Copyhold is necessarily parcel of a manor, and the freehold is said to be in the lord of the manor. The court roll of the manor is the evidence of title and the record of the special laws as to fines, quit rents, heriots, &c., prevailing in the manor. When copyhold land is conveyed from one person to another, it is surrendered by the owner to the lord, who by his payment of the customary fine makes a new grant of it to the purchaser. The lord must admit the vendor’s nominee, but the form of the conveyance is still that of surrender and re-grant. The lord, as legal owner of the fee-simple of the lands, has a right to all the mines and minerals and to all the growing timber, although the tenant may have planted it himself. Hence it appears that the existence of copyhold tenures may sometimes be traced by the total absence of timber from such lands, while on freehold lands it grows in abundance. Hence also the popular saying that the “oak grows not except on free land.” The copyholder must not commit waste either by cutting
