Pope Michael II

Overview

Pope Michael II, also known as Kha’il II, was the fifty-third patriarch of the See of Saint Mark, with a patriarchate dated to 849–851. His principal biography describes a tenure lasting one year and five months and presents him as a man whose reputation rested on sanctity, profound knowledge of Scripture, and religious scholarship. Before his election, he had served Patriarch Yusab I as a deacon, scribe, and assistant, then withdrawn to monastic life in the Western Desert.¹²

Michael’s short patriarchate combined continuity in church leadership with demanding financial obligations. He succeeded Yusab I without opposition from the bishops, clergy, or Coptic archons, but faced pressure from the Abbasid administration for the prompt payment of heavy taxes. His biography characterizes the reign as comparatively uneventful while identifying taxation as its principal difficulty.²⁵

The patriarchal chronology places him between Yusab I (830–849) and Cosmas II (851–858). It gives his monastic provenance as Abu Yuhannis, corresponding to the Monastery of Saint John named in his biography, rather than the Anba Maqar provenance assigned to his immediate predecessor and successor.³⁴

History and origins

Service under Yusab I

Michael first became known to the Alexandrian church through practical service to Yusab I. While still a deacon, he acted as the patriarch’s scribe and assistant; the biography specifically identifies this work as the setting in which the Alexandrians became acquainted with him. His subsequent selection therefore followed an earlier period of direct involvement in patriarchal affairs, not simply a reputation acquired in a distant monastery.²

The account connects his acceptance as a successor with two qualities: sanctity and a profound knowledge of the Holy Scriptures. These qualities stand alongside his previous administrative service, giving the portrait both a spiritual and a practical dimension. His suitability for leadership was already recognized by the bishops, clergy, and archons who accepted his succession.²

Withdrawal to Wadi Habib

Michael eventually asked Yusab to release him from his local responsibilities and permit him to withdraw to Wadi Habib, in the Western Desert. He entered the Monastery of Saint John, identified as Dayr Anba Yuhannis, where he concentrated on prayer and further study. His reputation for scholarship in religious matters continued to grow during this monastic period.⁴

This move was a requested release from active service rather than a rejection of religious learning or responsibility. In the biographical sequence, the knowledge for which he was already respected was deepened through prayer and study in the monastery. His life before election thus joined experience in the patriarchal administration with a sustained commitment to monastic learning.²⁴

Election and consecration

After Yusab I’s death, Michael’s succession encountered no opposition from the bishops, clergy, or Coptic archons. Nevertheless, acceptance by the church’s representatives did not mean willingness on the candidate’s part: when a delegation from Alexandria came to bring him for consecration, he resisted. The delegates eventually compelled him to accompany them to the city.²⁶

He was consecrated in Alexandria on 24 Hatur. The narrative does not present his resistance as a dispute over another candidate; instead, it places an unwilling monk at the center of an otherwise unopposed succession. That distinction is important to understanding the account: agreement among those choosing the patriarch coexisted with reluctance on the part of the person chosen.²⁶

The patriarchate under Abbasid rule

Political setting and taxation

Michael’s contemporary ruler was the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil (847–861). According to the biography, the caliph instructed the governor of Egypt to press the patriarch for immediate payment of his heavy taxes. The continuing imposition of increasing annual taxation became the main problem of Michael’s administration.⁵

The account nevertheless states cautiously that Michael appears to have paid these demands to the satisfaction of the Islamic administration. Its wording supports a picture of financial pressure that was met, rather than a documented confrontation culminating in imprisonment or refusal. The burden lay in the persistence and increase of the demands themselves.⁵

The description of the reign as “brief and uneventful” must consequently be understood alongside this financial context. The same passage that uses that characterization identifies taxation as a permanent and vexatious problem. In this account, the absence of a longer sequence of dramatic incidents does not imply that the patriarchal office was free of serious burdens.⁵

Physical frailty and the demands of office

Michael is described as physically frail. His biographer suggests that the weight of his patriarchal responsibilities may have been too much for him to bear. This is an interpretation offered by the source, not a precise medical explanation of his final illness.⁷

The contrast between the monk devoted to prayer and study and the patriarch responsible for meeting the administration’s financial demands gives the short biography its central tension. Both aspects are explicit in the account: the office drew him away from the monastic setting he had deliberately sought, and its responsibilities were especially demanding for a man of weak physical constitution.⁴⁵⁷

Spiritual character and religious learning

Michael’s spiritual portrait centers on sanctity, scriptural knowledge, prayer, and study. His learning was not presented as separate from his religious life: the biography first identifies his profound knowledge of Scripture as a reason for the church’s confidence in him, then describes his monastic years as a period of prayer and further studies.²⁴

The source’s emphasis is therefore on the formation and character of a church leader. His earlier service as a scribe made him known in Alexandria, while his withdrawal to the desert strengthened his reputation for religious scholarship. These connected stages explain why a monk who resisted election could nevertheless be the readily accepted successor to Yusab I.²⁴⁶

Liturgical observance and commemoration

The final Easter visit

In the second year of his patriarchate, Michael returned to Wadi Habib to celebrate Easter with the monks. His biography explicitly describes this as an established custom followed by previous patriarchs. The visit thus belonged to an existing pattern of patriarchal participation in monastic festal life, rather than being presented as an innovation of his own.⁷

During that visit he became seriously ill and died. The account places his final illness in the desert community to which he had returned for Easter, linking the conclusion of his patriarchate with the monastic setting that had shaped his earlier life.⁷

Differing commemoration dates

The supplied encyclopedia materials preserve two different calendar indications. One entry identifies “Kha’il II, or Michael II” as a ninth-century patriarch of Alexandria and assigns his feast to 20 Baramhat. Another calendar lists Kha’il II, fifty-third patriarch of Alexandria, in the group beginning with 22—17, alongside Anba Alexandros I and Mark II.⁸⁹

The latter entry corresponds to 22 Baramudah: the calendar proceeds from that group toward the beginning of Bashans, and the separate biography of Mark II explicitly gives his feast as 22 Baramudah. The two indications should be retained as a source discrepancy; the passages do not establish whether they reflect different traditions or an editorial error.⁹¹⁰

Death, burial, and differing local reports

The principal biography states that Michael was buried at the Monastery of Saint Macarius, also called Dayr Anba Maqar. This burial location should be distinguished from the Monastery of Saint John, where the same account places his earlier monastic formation.⁴⁷

A separate encyclopedia article on Burah, the older name of the town identified there as Kafr al-Battikh, preserves a potentially different report. It says that Eutychius mentioned the burial of a patriarch named Kha’il at Burah, but did not supply enough information to determine whether the patriarch was Kha’il II (849–851) or Kha’il III (880–907).¹¹

The evidence therefore does not amount to two equally explicit burial statements about Michael II. One source names his burial at Saint Macarius directly; the other concerns a Kha’il whose identity remains unresolved. If the Burah report refers to Kha’il II, it differs from the principal biography, but the supplied passages do not allow that identification to be settled.⁷¹¹

Names, terminology, and historical texts

Michael II and Kha’il II

The equivalence of Michael II and Kha’il II is explicit in the encyclopedia’s commemorative list, and its index directs readers from “Michael II” to “Kha’il II, Patriarch.” These are alternative names for the same fifty-third patriarch, not two separate holders of the office.⁸¹²

The sources also use slightly different transliterated forms for his monastery. The narrative gives Dayr Anba Yuhannis, translated there as the Monastery of Saint John, while the chronological table records Abu Yuhannis in its provenance column. For his burial monastery, the biography supplies the form Dayr Anba Maqar alongside the English name Monastery of Saint Macarius.³⁴⁷

His biography in the History of the Patriarchs

The encyclopedia’s article on Yuhanna, the scribe of Shenute I, includes Kha’il II among the nine patriarchs whose biographies Yuhanna wrote. This series covers the forty-seventh through fifty-fifth patriarchs, from Mina I to Shenute I. The article describes Yuhanna as a close companion of these patriarchs and as a writer who sometimes identifies himself as an eyewitness.¹³

A separate discussion of the History of the Patriarchs identifies the author of lives 47–55 as a monk named John. It says that his spiritual father Ammon, or Ammunah, instructed him to write these lives, that he was especially close to the last three patriarchs in the series, and that he probably served all three as a scribe. It dates his composition to 865–866, placing the writing after Michael II’s death.¹⁴

The supplied passages differ, however, over the later compilation history. The Yuhanna article says that Sawirus ibn al-Muqaffa‘ discovered the record at Dayr Nahya and incorporated it into his History of the Patriarchs. The separate historical discussion reports research by den Heijer that rejects Sawirus’s role as compiler of the Coptic lives and editor of their Arabic translation, instead identifying a collection and translation campaign led by Mawhub ibn Mansur ibn Mufarrij.¹³¹⁵

The latter discussion also contains an internal identification difficulty: it labels the subsequent series, lives 56–65 covering 880–1046, as beginning with “Kha’il II.” Elsewhere in the supplied material, Kha’il II is consistently the fifty-third patriarch of 849–851, while Kha’il III is the fifty-sixth patriarch, dated 880–907. This discrepancy concerns the description of a later biographical series and should not be used to relocate Michael II’s patriarchate to 880.¹³¹⁵

A bibliographical entry records the continuation of the History of the Patriarchs covering Kha’il II to Shenute I, edited by Yassa ‘Abd al-Masih and O. H. E. Burmester and published in Cairo in 1943. It provides a specific published reference for the historical sequence in which Michael II’s life appears.¹⁶