This excellent book studies how the Christian church in Egypt functioned as an institution through the seventh century. The title's reference to the “Alexandrian church” does not communicate the scope of the research, which extends to the church throughout Egypt and Libya, but does reflect the patriarchate's dominance of these regions, which was unique in comparison to other areas of ancient Christianity. One of the world's leading historians of late ancient and early Byzantine Christianity in Egypt, Ewa Wipszycka has published authoritative studies in this field for decades; specialists in the area are deeply familiar with her works, which have almost always been in French. The appearance of this book in clear, even conversational, English should make her wisdom available to a wider range of early church historians, all of whom would profit from reading it.

As the author admits, the book defies simple summary, for it makes no single argument, nor does it offer a straightforward historical narrative. Rather, its aim is “to compile pieces of information and to discuss them in a critical manner in order to instruct the readers about the value of the sources and to enable them to evaluate the reconstructions based on the source material” (415). Fourteen chapters consider such topics as the origins of the monarchic episcopate in Egypt; episcopal elections; the selection, duties, and payroll of the clergy; the patriarch's staff and his relationships to his bishops; and church treasures. Although chapters on subjects having to deal with the earlier end of Wipszycka's chronological range appear earlier in the book, the chapters do not follow a chronological order. The sparsity and uneven nature of the evidence makes this approach inevitable. In each case, the surviving evidence on each subject requires that Wipszcyka focus on one or another location and period and then extrapolate to locations and periods that lack such documentation. In addition to literary sources, including church histories, hagiographies, and “normative texts” (for example, Canons of Athanasius), Wipszycka makes frequent use of the archives in papyri of Bishops Abraham of Hermonthis and Pinsentius of Koptos, both of whom conducted their pastoral duties as they resided in monasteries during the first quarter of the seventh century. One chapter analyzes a single set of sources, the Lives of John the Almsgiver (Chalcedonian patriarch 610–619), for what they reveal about the economics of the Alexandrian patriarchate. Wipszycka often quotes sources at length, and she makes her own reasoning about them transparent to the reader, pointing out even the weaknesses in her own arguments.

If Wipszycka articulates any grand conclusion, other than the frustrating nature of the evidence, it is the “pragmatic and flexible manner” in which members of the church hierarchy acted (438): attention to the spiritual needs of Egyptian Christians often took precedence over the theological divisions that entrance modern scholars, above all, that between proponents and opponents of Chalcedon. The author's approach to every problem is similarly flexible and pragmatic; if she exhibits any theoretical or methodological perspective, it is a low-key Weberian interest in how bureaucracies work and are sometimes challenged by a “charismatic figure” like Shenoute, the monastic leader (363).

Wipszycka's focus on institutional history means that the book does not address some major topics that interest historians of early Christian religion. For example, she does not consider Alexandrian Christianity when it had no formal institutional church, that is, before the emergence of Demetrius (189–232) as the first known bishop, and so the reader will find no treatments of the enigmatic origins of Christianity in Alexandria or its philosophical, possibly “heretical” character in the second century. And in general, she does not study the symbolic or ideological dimensions of the church, such as theology and liturgy. Here the book contrasts sharply with Stephen J. Davis's The Early Coptic Papacy: The Egyptian Church and its Leadership in Late Antiquity (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2004), which offers a discursive history of the patriarchate, showing how it was rhetorically and socially constructed, and in which the patriarchs’ theological commitments figure prominently. Studies of theology, worship, and rhetorical self-presentation abound for early Christian Egypt, however, and so the absence of such in Wipszycka's book is not to be lamented. Rather, church historians of all stripes can be grateful for the evidence that Ewa Wipszycka has gathered and the transparent, critical analysis that she brings to it. This book is essential reading for scholars of early Egyptian Christianity, but should command the attention of all historians of the ancient church.