The Saint Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai

Thursday, 1 March 2018 - 12:00 pm (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination:
Category/Kategorie: General, House of the Month, UNESCO World Heritage, Union for the Mediterranean
Reading Time:  6 minutes

Saint Catherine's Monastery in front of Mount Sinai © flickr.com - Joonas Plaan/cc-by-2.0

Saint Catherine’s Monastery in front of Mount Sinai © flickr.com – Joonas Plaan/cc-by-2.0

Saint Catherine’s Monastery, officially “Sacred Monastery of the God-Trodden Mount Sinai”, lies on the Sinai Peninsula, at the mouth of a gorge at the foot of Mount Sinai, in the city of Saint Catherine, Egypt in the South Sinai Governorate. The monastery is controlled by the autonomous Church of Sinai, part of the wider Eastern Orthodox Church, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Built between 548 and 565, the monastery is one of the oldest working Christian monasteries in the world. The site contains the world’s oldest continually operating library, possessing many unique books including the Syriac Sinaiticus and, until 1859, the Codex Sinaiticus. A small town with hotels and swimming pools, called Saint Katherine City, has grown around the monastery.

According to tradition, Catherine of Alexandria was a Christian martyr sentenced to death on the breaking wheel. When this failed to kill her, she was beheaded. According to tradition, angels took her remains to Mount Sinai. Around the year 800, monks from the Sinai Monastery found her remains. Although it is commonly known as Saint Catherine’s, the monastery’s full official name is the Sacred Monastery of the God-Trodden Mount Sinai. The patronal feast of the monastery is the Feast of the Transfiguration. The monastery has become a favorite site of pilgrimage.

© Berthold Werner/cc-by-sa-3.0 © Hatem Moushir/cc-by-sa-4.0 Saint Catherine's Monastery in front of Mount Sinai © flickr.com - Joonas Plaan/cc-by-2.0 Bell tower © flickr.com - someone10x/cc-by-2.0 Burning Bush © Mloosak/cc-by-sa-3.0 Garden © Testus/cc-by-sa-3.0
<
>
Saint Catherine's Monastery in front of Mount Sinai © flickr.com - Joonas Plaan/cc-by-2.0
The monastery library preserves the second largest collection of early codices and manuscripts in the world, outnumbered only by the Vatican Library. It contains Greek, Arabic, Armenian, Coptic, Georgian, Aramaic and Caucasian Albanian texts. In May 1844 and February 1859, Constantin von Tischendorf visited the monastery for research and discovered the Codex Sinaiticus, dating from the 4th Century, at the time the oldest almost completely preserved manuscript of the Bible. The finding from 1859 left the monastery in the 19th century for Russia, in circumstances that had been long disputed. But in 2003 Russian scholars discovered the donation act for the manuscript signed by the Council of Cairo Metochion and Archbishop Callistratus on 13 November 1869. The monastery received 9000 rubles as a gift from Tsar Alexander II of Russia. The Codex was sold by Stalin in 1933 to the British Museum and is now in the British Library, London, where it is on public display. Prior to September 1, 2009, a previously unseen fragment of Codex Sinaiticus was discovered in the monastery’s library. In February 1892, Agnes Smith Lewis identified a palimpsest in St Catherine’s library that became known as the Syriac Sinaiticus and is still in the Monastery’s possession. Agnes and her sister Margaret Dunlop Gibson returned with a team of scholars that included J. Rendel Harris, to photograph and transcribe the work in its entirety. As the manuscript predates the Codex Sinaiticus, it became crucial in understanding the history of the New Testament. The Monastery also has a copy of the Ashtiname of Muhammad, in which the Islamic prophet Muhammad is claimed to have bestowed his protection upon the monastery. The most important manuscripts have since been filmed or digitized, and so are accessible to scholars. A team of imaging scientists and scholars from the US and Europe used spectral imaging techniques developed for imaging the Archimedes Palimpsest to study more than one hundred palimpsests in the monastery library. The library will be extensively renovated for some time. As of 5 September 2017, there are about 130 palimpsests identified at St. Catherine’s Monastery. Since 2011, scholars have recovered 74 palimpsests, containing 6,800 pages of text. This includes “108 pages of previously unknown Greek poems and the oldest-known recipe attributed to the Greek physician Hippocrates”.

The complex houses irreplaceable works of art: mosaics, the best collection of early icons in the world, many in encaustic, as well as liturgical objects, chalices and reliquaries, and church buildings. The large icon collection begins with a few dating to the 5th (possibly) and 6th centuries, which are unique survivals; the monastery having been untouched by Byzantine iconoclasm, and never sacked. The oldest icon on an Old Testament theme is also preserved there. A project to catalogue the collections has been ongoing since the 1960s. The monastery was an important centre for the development of the hybrid style of Crusader art, and still retains over 120 icons created in the style, by far the largest collection in existence. Many were evidently created by Latins, probably monks, based in or around the monastery in the 13th century.

Read more on Mount Sinai Monastery, unesco.org – Saint Catherine Area and Wikipedia Saint Catherine’s Monastery (Smart Traveler App by U.S. Department of State - Weather report by weather.com - Johns Hopkins University & Medicine - Coronavirus Resource Center - Global Passport Power Rank - Democracy Index - GDP according to IMF, UN, and World Bank - Global Competitiveness Report - Corruption Perceptions Index - Press Freedom Index - World Justice Project - Rule of Law Index - UN Human Development Index - Global Peace Index - Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index). Photos by Wikimedia Commons. If you have a suggestion, critique, review or comment to this blog entry, we are looking forward to receive your e-mail at comment@wingsch.net. Please name the headline of the blog post to which your e-mail refers to in the subject line.




Recommended posts:

Share this post: (Please note data protection regulations before using buttons)

Koenigstein im Taunus

Koenigstein im Taunus

[caption id="attachment_154252" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Hotel Villa Rothschild © Karsten11[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Königstein im Taunus is a climatic spa and lies on the thickly wooded slopes of the Taunus in Hesse. Owing to its advantageous location for both scenery and transport on the edge of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Region, Königstein is a favourite residential town, near Frankfurt. Königstein has an extraordinarily high level of purchasing power . In 2010, their purchasing power index was of 191 perce...

[ read more ]

Theme Week San Francisco - Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay

Theme Week San Francisco - Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay

[caption id="attachment_165546" align="aligncenter" width="590"] © BLuP1/cc-by-2.5[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Alcatraz Island is located in San Francisco Bay, 1.25 miles (2.01 km) offshore from San Francisco. The small island was developed with facilities for a lighthouse, a military fortification, a military prison (1868), and a federal prison from 1934 until 1963. Beginning in November 1969, the island was occupied for more than 19 months by a group of Native Americans from San Francisco who were part of a wave of Native activ...

[ read more ]

The four-masted steel barque Passat

The four-masted steel barque Passat

[caption id="attachment_153000" align="aligncenter" width="590"] © Aconcagua[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Passat is a German four-masted steel barque and one of the Flying P-Liners, the famous sailing ships of the German shipping company F. Laeisz. The name "Passat" means trade wind in German. She is one of the last surviving windjammers. In 1957, a few weeks after the tragic loss of Pamir in mid-Atlantic and shortly after having been severely hit by a storm, Passat was decommissioned. She had almost experienced the same f...

[ read more ]

The Crown Princess

The Crown Princess

[caption id="attachment_225236" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Crown Princess in Cockburn Town, Grand Turk Island © CB2379/cc-by-sa-3.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Crown Princess is a Crown-class cruise ship owned and operated by Princess Cruises. Her maiden voyage took place on June 14, 2006, departing Red Hook, Brooklyn (New York) for Grand Turk (Turks and Caicos Islands), Ocho Rios (Jamaica), Grand Cayman (Cayman Islands), and Port Canaveral (Florida). As of 2019, Crown Princess sails in the Caribbean during the Wint...

[ read more ]

Portrait: Rothschild family

Portrait: Rothschild family

[caption id="attachment_163358" align="aligncenter" width="488"] Coat of arms of the Rothschild family[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]The Rothschild family is a wealthy family descending from Mayer Amschel Rothschild, a court Jew to the German Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel, in the Free City of Frankfurt, who established his banking business in the 1760s in Judengasse. Unlike most previous court Jews, Rothschild managed to bequeath his wealth and established an international banking family through his five sons, who established themselve...

[ read more ]

The Thousand Islands

The Thousand Islands

[caption id="attachment_153033" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Just Enough Room Island © Omegatron/cc-by-sa-3.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]The Thousand Islands constitute an archipelago of 1,864 islands that straddles the Canada-U.S. border in the Saint Lawrence River as it emerges from the northeast corner of Lake Ontario. They stretch for about 50 miles (80 km) downstream from Kingston, Ontario. The Canadian islands are in the province of Ontario, the U.S. islands in the state of New York. Passenger air service to the 1000 I...

[ read more ]

University of Notre Dame

University of Notre Dame

[caption id="attachment_221578" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Main Building © Matthew Rice/cc-by-sa-4.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame or ND, is a private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend. It was founded in 1842 by Edward Sorin. The main campus covers 1,261 acres (510 ha) in a suburban setting; it contains a number of recognizable landmarks, such as the Golden Dome, the Word of Life mural (commonly known as Touchdown...

[ read more ]

The Savoy Hotel

The Savoy Hotel

[caption id="attachment_161262" align="aligncenter" width="590"] The Savoy Hotel © geograph.org.uk - Steve F / Wikicommons[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]The Savoy Hotel is a hotel located on the Strand, in the City of Westminster in central London. Built by impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte with profits from his Gilbert and Sullivan operas, the hotel opened on 6 August 1889. It was the first in the Savoy group of hotels and restaurants owned by Carte's family for over a century. It was also the first luxury hotel in Britain, introduc...

[ read more ]

Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire

Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire

[caption id="attachment_192611" align="aligncenter" width="590"] © GavinJA/cc-by-sa-3.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Waddesdon Manor is a country house in the village of Waddesdon, in Buckinghamshire, England. It is located in the Aylesbury Vale, 6.6 miles (10.6 km) west of Aylesbury. The Grade I listed house was built in the Neo-Renaissance style of a French château between 1874 and 1889 for Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild (1839–1898) as a weekend residence for grand entertaining and as a setting for his collection. The last mem...

[ read more ]

Ostrava in the Czech Republic

Ostrava in the Czech Republic

[caption id="attachment_161060" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Market Square © Pudelek[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Ostrava is the third largest city in the Czech Republic and the second largest urban agglomeration after Prague. Located close to the Polish border, it is also the administrative center of the Moravian-Silesian Region and of the Municipality with Extended Competence. Ostrava was candidate for the title of European Capital of Culture 2015. Ostrava is located at the confluence of the Ostravice, Oder, Lučina and Opav...

[ read more ]

Return to TopReturn to Top
Zehnder's © AndrewHorne/cc-by-sa-3.0
Frankenmuth in Michigan

Frankenmuth is a city in Saginaw County in Michigan. The population is at 5,000. The city is located within Frankenmuth...

The docks at Bella Coola © flickr.com - Colin/cc-by-2.0
Bella Coola in British Columbia

Bella Coola is a community in the Bella Coola Valley in British Columbia. Bella Coola usually refers to the entire...

Abu Dhabi view from Marina village © panoramio.com - patano/cc-by-sa-3.0
Theme Week United Arab Emirates – Emirate of Abu Dhabi

The Emirate of Abu Dhabi is one of seven emirates that constitute the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It is the...

Schließen