And
Now And Then One Happens Upon A Building That Creates The Same
Impression.
Such a building is this church.
It is known and recorded
that more than a thousand years ago it had a patriarch whose name was
Shenuti; but it is supposed to have been built long before that time,
and parts of it look as if they had been set up at the very beginning
of things. The walls are dingy and whitewashed. The wooden roof is
peaked, with many cross-beams. High up on the walls are several small
square lattices of wood. The floor is of discolored stone. Everywhere
one sees wood wrought into lattices, crumbling carpets that look
almost as frail and brittle and fatigued as wrappings of mummies, and
worn-out matting that would surely become as the dust if one set his
feet hard upon it. The structure of the building is basilican, and it
contains some strange carvings of the Last Supper, the Nativity, and
St. Demetrius. Around the nave there are monolithic columns of white
marble, and one column of the red and shining granite that is found in
such quantities at Assuan. There are three altars in three chapels
facing toward the East. Coptic monks and nuns are renowned for their
austerity of life, and their almost fierce zeal in fasting and in
prayer, and in Coptic churches the services are sometimes so long that
the worshippers, who are almost perpetually standing, use crutches for
their support. In their churches there always seems to me to be a cold
and austere atmosphere, far different from the atmosphere of the
mosques or of any Roman Catholic church.
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