The Endoxon of Michael the Archangel

The Endoxon of Michael the Archangel (P.Heid.Inv. Kopt. 686): Monastic Scribes and the Ritualization of Michaelic Piety in Islamic Egypt This paper focuses on a Coptic manuscript at the heart of my book project, P.Heid.Inv. Kopt. 686 (=PCM I 26; Universität Heidelberg, Institut für Papyrologie). This tenth-century parchment palimpsest was made by erasing and trimming a ninth-century liturgical lectionary into a single-quire handbook of twenty pages. The magical prayer written over it, known as Endoxon of the Archangel Michael, is said to be efficacious in healing those afflicted by demonic possession. The Endoxon resonates strongly with the vast corpus of Coptic homilies dedicated to the archangel Michael that circulated widely across the Nile Valley between Late Antiquity and the early Islamic period. The paper makes two arguments. First, the Endoxon emerges as an experimental expression of Michaelic piety cultivated by networks of clerical scribes operating across the Nile Valley. Second, the Endoxon was modelled on, and was likely performed in the setting of, the “occasional prayers” for the sick known from medieval Coptic euchologia.