The Oriental Churches, Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian and Syrian – Orthodox and Catholic – which today number close to 70 million adherents, are on the whole little known in the west, and often feature in classical church history texts in relation to their ‘rejection’ of the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Recent research, especially in relation to ecumenical dialogue, between these Churches and the Catholic Church in particular, has helped clarify positions taken on Christology. In the heat of the controversy and polemics of the fifth and sixth century each side had understood the other side's position from its own grasp of the technical terms involved and not from the perspective of the other. These positions had become fossilised by the time of the Arab invasions and the imposition of Islam in the Middle East which cut relations between the west and the Byzantine world and Oriental Christian Churches. It is only since the 1960s that theologians from each side have been able and willing to consider the other side's position and understanding of the terminology historically used; this has given way to a renewed awareness that underlying the verbal conflicts there is a common understanding on the nature of the incarnation. This symbiotic relationship between the work of theologians and the statements of Church leaders led to the current patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Shenouda iii, elected in 1971, and Pope Paul vi (1962–78) agreeing a common profession of faith in May 1973. This is a rare example of theological understanding and church leadership being far in advance of wider knowledge, especially in the academic world. Despite these significant ecclesial developments, and the important revival and renewal of Coptic monasticism in the Egyptian desert, which has wide influence (see Mark Gruber osb, Journey back to Eden: my life and times among the desert Fathers, New York 2002), the Coptic Church is still little known in the west. Given this context the importance of Alastair Hamilton's very interesting and well-researched book is obvious. Whilst the book is not an introductory text on Coptic/Egyptian Christianity (for this see the late Otto Meinardus's classic study Two thousand years of Coptic Christianity, Cairo 1999, and Thedore H. Partrick, Traditional Egyptian Christianity: a history of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Greensboro, NC 1996), Hamilton's monograph is a primer for understanding the encounter between the Coptic Church and the west. The Copts and the west is divided into four parts, each subdivided into a number of chapters. In the first section the chapter on ‘The Copts in Egypt’ surveys the emergence and development of Alexandrian Christianity into what we know as Coptic Christianity in modern Egypt, while that on ‘Muslim domination’ gives an account of the impact of Islam upon Christianity in Egypt which over the centuries went from majority to a minority status: approximately 10 per cent in today's Egypt. The rule of Islam limited the social and political possibilities for Christians; and despite a short religious upsurge in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the cultural horizons of the Coptic Church became limited. However, it maintained contacts with the Ethiopian Church for which it provided the senior churchman/abunate until 1948/51; and through the desert monasteries which still received Syriac and Armenian monastics, and especially Ethiopian pilgrims journeying to Jerusalem, who established their own communities in the Egyptian desert. Part ii considers the various Catholic missions to the Coptic Church. These four chapters are especially interesting and rich, as Hamilton provides us with a great deal of information on this important subject. Four hundred years are covered, from the Council of Florence, which the Coptic agreed to unlike its sister church of Ethiopia, until the emergence of the Coptic Catholic Church in the seventeenth century. The first Jesuit mission, one of the most important for the Catholic Reformation, is explored, providing a wealth of knowledge. Hamilton has mined the recent Jesuit scholarship of Charles Libois (his four-volume Monumenta Proximi-Orientis: Egypte [1447–1773], Rome 1993–2003). On the importance of Jesuit sources see Hamilton's ‘The distorted image of the Copts’, Heythrop Journal xl (2000), 321–6. Relations between the various Franciscan missions to Christian Egypt, often neglected by existing scholarship, are carefully described, again using the most authoritative research available. Hamilton might have said more on Egypt as a base for Franciscan and Jesuit mission to the ancient Church of Ethiopia, for the encounter with the Coptic Church opened up to a discovery of Christian Ethiopia. The subsequent history and establishment of the Coptic Catholic Church largely lies outside the time frame of the book, although Hamilton returns to the story in his epilogue. Whilst the author is right to state that pope Leo xiii ‘nominated’ a Coptic Catholic patriarch in 1895, the actual founding of the patriarchate was in 1824, when Leo xii was falsely led to believe that the viceroy of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, wanted a Coptic Catholic patriarchate to be established for all Copts. Once the deception was uncovered the patriarchate remained established only on paper. This story is told by Jozef Metzler, the one-time head of the archives of the Propaganda Fide, in Euntes Docete (1964); from my reading this is the only major source on the subject that Hamiliton has not consulted. The next two parts of The Copts and the west are important, and fascinating, accounts of the growth of knowledge and scholarship on the Copts and their culture, often marked by western confessionalism, as British and German travellers and others scholars discovered Egypt. In part iii, ‘Knowledge of the Copts’ due consideration is given to Johann Michael Vansleb (Wansleben) (1648–1679) and to the great French Orientalist, and scholar of eastern Christian liturgy, Eusèbe Renaudot (1648–1720), who wrote the monumental Historia patriarcharum Alexandrinorum Jacobitarum (1713), which still frames discussion of Egyptian Christianity in the context of `separation' from the western Church, reinforced by sixteenth-century divisions; for Catholics seeking historical continuities between Rome and the Oriental Churches; and for Protestants justification for rejection of papal authority. Part iv, `The Coptic language', looks at the study of Coptic in relation to Egypt's early history, in particular the work of Athanasius Kircher (c. 1601–80), a German Jesuit who produced the first Coptic dictionary. The collecting of manuscripts by European scholars and travellers, and its relation to biblical studies is given extended treatment here. The Copts and the west is a very successful and important contribution to the European discovery of Christian Egypt and its culture; the scope, four centuries, and the wide range of themes taken into consideration are testament to the fine scholarship of the author. Hamilton's bibliography is itself an important contribution.

Over the last four decades around 400,000 Coptic Christians have moved to the west bringing with them their religious customs, a renewed monasticism and a great sense of theological distinctiveness; today the story is of Coptic discovery of the west. It is hoped that an account of this contemporary reality will now be undertaken, for which Hamilton work will provide solid foundation.