Nile river
Its beginnings are very dark. The tradition spoke of a preaching of Saint Mark in Alexandria. However, the first reliable testimonies we have in a tiny fragment on papyrus of the Gospel of San Juan, written perhaps between 120 and 130. Alexandria in the s. II had a bishop, Panteno, and a catechetical school that from the beginning of s. III directed Clement (160-215), a convert possibly from Athens and in whose writings the legacy of ancient philosophy and literary technique is used to interpret Christianity. The greatest figure of the Alexandrian church was Origen (185-253), who devoted himself to asceticism and catechesis, and of which some works are preserved. The same persecution that killed Origen, that of the Emperor Decius, was also the cause of a deep split between Christians who had sacrificed and those who did not (papyri containing certificates of sacrifice issued in the name of the one who had made it are kept). Also in those years the anchorite movement emerged in Egypt. The first Egyptian Christian to retire to the desert was Pablo de Tebas, "educated in Greek and Egyptian letters", who settled there during the persecution, although it was Antonio, around 270, who spread the new style of life. Then came the monasticism of Pachomius in the first half of the third century, which established ascetic communities of monks and nuns subjected in monasteries to some rules. Macario or Pegol extended other semicenobíticas communities with own rules. When the persecution of Diocletian ended, the Egyptian church entered a period of disputes, aggravated by the Council of Nicaea (324). The Nicene orthodoxy was poorly reconciled with the theological plurality of the Eastern world, especially the Egyptian one. The Orthodox bishops were an exception in the East and the case of the Alexandrian see, with its bishop Athanasius, deposed twice by a provincial council, is paradigmatic. The Edict of Thessalonica (380) in favor of the Catholic doctrine, although it reinforced the authority of the bishop of Alexandria, Peter, successor of Athanasius, did not find a good acceptance in a heterodox clergy either. With the legislation imposed by Theodosius that prohibited the sacrifices and the entrance to the pagan temples (391) the Christian behavior was especially aggressive, with a wave of destructions, including the temple of Serapis. Cyril, the patriarch of Alexandria, expelled the Jews from the city while Hypatia, the Neoplatonic philosopher, was murdered by Christians.
