The Church of the Martyrs

(Above) Image of the Twenty-one in a revived “Coptic” style. The common people usually prefer cruder but more expressive images.

Die 21: Eine Reise ins Land der koptischen Martyrer
(The 21: A Journey to the Land of the Coptic Martyrs)

2018 Rowohlt Verlag G.m.b.H. Reinbeck bei Hamburg

The image on the cover of a magazine had attracted me. It showed the head of a young man, apparently a Mediterranean type, surrounded by some orange-colored material. He’s a thin young man with brownish skin, a low hairline, and a not very thick mustache, the eyes half closed. The narrow lips are slightly open and let a little of the teeth be seen. It’s not a smile, rather a sign of deep relaxation, in which the mouth involuntarily opens for a deep breath or a sigh.

But then I discovered that the cropped image shown on the magazine had misled me. I hadn’t realized at first that the head had been separated from the body.

Martin Mosebach opens his new book with this startling image. Die 21 tells of his pilgrimage last year to the land of the twenty-one Coptic men who were killed in 2015 by ISIS in Libya. Part reportage on current events, part travel narrative and part modern day hagiography, Die 21 also addresses liturgy, art, history and theology. Stylistically, Die 21 ranges from precise, almost scientific, descriptive prose to images alternately poetic, shocking and surrealistic. The only work I know that resembles it somewhat in both subject matter and style is Joris-Karl Huysmans’s Les Foules de Lourdes (1908).

Mosebach takes us on a journey of exploration to another world, where the spiritual remains a dimension of ordinary life. For those whose understanding of Christianity is derived from the moribund Roman Catholic Church of the West – the decadent clergy, the “mature Christians” of the financial centers and well-to-do suburbs, the enthusiasts of the “new movements” – Mosebach’s book will be either a destabilizing confrontation with a world thought overcome or a welcome revelation that the Christian Faith still lives on upon this earth.

Mosebach first tells of the martyrdom itself by minutely describing the main evidence of it: the horrifying, very professional video prepared by ISIS of the beheading of these men. The martyrs show no signs of excitement or anguish and above all do not plead for mercy. On their faces only quiet resolve and recollection are visible. The last word on the lips of several was “Jesus.” Twenty were Copts – Egyptian Christians – most of them from a single village. A stranger, a black man from Ghana, had joined them in martyrdom.

Mosebach in the course of the book strives to give each man a separate character and individuality. It is a difficult task. But is that not the case in so many martyrdoms? There are the forty martyrs of Sebaste, frozen to death. Mosebach himself refers to the martyrs of the entire Theban legion (from Thebes in Egypt, that is) who, strangely enough, unite Egypt and Germany. The coat of arms of Cologne still commemorates St. Ursula and her eleven thousand companions. And as recently as 2013 did we not celebrate the canonization of the eight hundred martyrs of Otranto? What is important is not the martyrs’ individuality, but their total identification with Christ. Mosebach records one of the martyrs saying as his confession of faith: “I am a Christian.” Not something enunciated as a concept or only as an article of belief but what he had become through the rite of baptism. And, as a Coptic priest tells us in this book, “Every Christian must have a cross, one real and one symbolic, neither may be lacking. Every Christian must relive Christ’s life.”

In the most moving part of his narrative Mosebach visits the village from which most of the martyrs hailed. They were just “ordinary guys.” Some could not read. Their families live in what we might consider extremely modest circumstances: farm animals dwell together with their owners in the same dwelling, swallows fly through the house during interviews. In his conversations with the martyrs’ families Mosebach records very little emotion – no enthusiasm, outward grief, rancor or desire for vengeance. Rather, similar to the attitude of the martyrs themselves, there is a quiet acceptance and a kind of modest pride in having now such advocates in heaven.

For among the Copts the spiritual is still an omnipresent reality. The martyrs’ families tell of the premonitions and signs that they now understand foretold the martyrdom of their children or husbands. Indeed, some of the men themselves seem to have had a presentiment that they would never return from Libya. And now, through the martyrs’ intercession, miracles and cures are taking place as well. Devotion to the 21 is spreading throughout Egypt. Even Muslims come by to request their help.

Yes, the world of the Copts is in so many ways that of the early Church. Persecution is a daily reality. Heavily armed guards are ubiquitous around Coptic institutions and villages. A bishop is unavailable to speak to Mosebach because he has been called to another location to care for girls who have been raped. A priest Mosebach is interviewing somewhat reluctantly admits to having been beaten severely in Libya – and then having been freed by a guard who apparently was impressed by this steadfastness. The priest immediately compared this to St. Peter’s escape form prison through the intervention of an angel. For the Copts are always ready to refer to the words of scripture, of which they have a great living knowledge, for analogies to their present trials and crises. Even though many cannot read, the bible is held with great reverence.

The source and center of the Copts’ spiritual life, however, is their liturgy. The Coptic Mass lasts three hours. It is celebrated in Greek and Coptic, languages nobody today “understands.” Yet the often-illiterate martyrs drew great spiritual treasures and strength from it. The entire Divine Liturgy is sung. Six of he martyrs were ordained “hymn-singers” – the others knew the Mass by heart. “They were totally absorbed (Mosebach states)by the rite – which in many cases in the Western world isn’t possible anymore even for monks.” Is it surprising that monasticism also remains of preeminent importance in Coptic spirituality?

The Coptic Church today is booming. New churches, monasteries, hospitals and schools are springing up everywhere. Formal instruction in the faith is expanding. Attracting the young people is no problem (perhaps not that difficult in a country where half the population is under 25). What the West perceives as contradictions: magnificence of the Traditional liturgy, service to the poor, martyrdom – are understood by the Copts as self-evidently inseparably linked.

Die 21 ends on a more somber, ambiguous note as, in the final chapters, the scene shifts to Cairo. Mosebach lets us experience the truly infernal quarter where the Coptic rag pickers of the city dwell – but this “ghetto” has given birth to a grand cathedral–like shrine and new residential areas. Yet, only a short drive away from the chaotic city of Cairo, an alien force, a new shopping mall, has set down in the desert. It offers to a traditional society a Western fantasy world of air conditioning and unlimited merchandise. For here and there throughout this book we are shown that Coptic and Egyptian life is changing: new homes, new churches, changing economic conditions. In a sense, Mosebach tells us, the Egyptians live between two ages – one coming to an end and the other not yet formed. And, for the Copts, the threat of attack is ever-present. In a country where Islam is the state religion, the government is unpredictable – now protecting, now harassing or even persecuting the Christian minority.

In Die 21 Martin Mosebach has given us his most significant work of religious non-fiction since The Heresy of Formlessness. It must have been a source of great satisfaction to the author to present to the world a flourishing Christian culture that in many ways confirms the theses on the traditional liturgies and their role in the Church for which Mosebach himself has argued for many years. Of course, from another perspective, Die 21 can be read as a point-by-point critique of the institutional Roman Catholic Church as it exists today in Western Europe and the United States. Die 21 indeed is an extraordinary commemoration of the contemporary martyrs of Egypt and of the Church and community that formed them. But at the same time it stands as a stern challenge and rebuke to us who have so much more than the Copts – at least as the world understands it – yet, as we must confess to our shame, have allowed our faith to dwindle away.

(We understand that Die 21 may be appearing soon in English translation. And our Society expects to to welcome Mr. Mosebach back to New York once more in November of this year.)