BARSANUPHIANS

One of several Alexandrian splinter groups of those Monophysites who, because they had rejected the communion of their patriarch, were known as Acephaloi (headless). They separated themselves from the Jacobites in the latter part of the fifth century under Emperor Zeno. In the patriarchate of ALEXANDER II (705-730), John of Sa converted the Barsanuphians at al-Muna to orthodoxy.

At the beginning of the ninth century MARK II, patriarch of Alexandria, baptized the two leaders of the Barsanuphians, George and his son Abraham, at the Church of the Martyr Saint Menas at Maryut. The rest of the Barsanuphians then followed their leaders back into the communion of the church.

The Barsanuphius from whom the sect derived its name was not BARSANUPHIUS the Anchorite monk but a pretender to the episcopal rank.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Neale, J. M. A History of the Holy Eastern Church: The Patriarchate of Alexandria, Vol. 2, pp. 22, 137. London, 1847.

RANDALL STEWART