Pishoy

Saint Pishoy (also known as Bishoy, Pishoi, or Anba Bishoy), venerated in the Coptic Orthodox Church as the Star of the Desert and the Beloved of the Saviour, was a leading Egyptian desert father of the fourth and early fifth centuries. Coptic tradition places his birth in 320 in the village of Shansa (Shensha) in the Nile Delta, as the youngest of seven brothers in a Christian family. Hagiographical accounts say that an angel appeared to his mother and told her that God had chosen this youngest son for divine service; she at first wished to offer one of her stronger children instead, but the angel insisted on Pishoy. In youth he left home for the wilderness of Scetis (Wadi El Natrun) and became a disciple of Abba Pambo, a principal teacher of the Nitrian desert. After Pambo’s death he remained in the eremitic life, later attracting disciples and serving as spiritual father to a monastic community that would be remembered as the Monastery of Saint Pishoy.

His reputation in Coptic memory rests on humility, hospitality, and love of neighbor, illustrated by a well-known cycle of stories. Tradition holds that Christ appeared to him more than once: once as a weary stranger whose feet Pishoy washed, after which Christ promised that Pishoy’s body would not see corruption; and again as an elderly monk whom Pishoy carried on his shoulders, an episode said to have left the saint’s body permanently bent, as Coptic icons often show him. Another account describes a day when the brethren hoped to see the Lord: while others passed a beggar on the road, Pishoy stopped to help him, and the beggar was revealed as Christ. He was also remembered as a copyist of Scripture who transcribed biblical books by hand, and as a man of unceasing prayer who, according to later narrative, sometimes tied his hair so that he would not fall asleep during night vigils.

Pishoy was associated with other leading figures of Scetis, including Saint John the Short (John Colobos). Coptic tradition further recounts a meeting with Saint Ephrem the Syrian in which a language barrier was miraculously overcome. In the early fifth century, Berber (Mazices) raids devastated Scetis, attacks well attested in the history of the desert monasteries around 407–408. Pishoy fled south with other monks to the mountain of Ansena, near ancient Antinoopolis in Middle Egypt. There he lived in the company of Saint Paul of Tammah. He died at Ansena on 8 Abib in 417 and was first buried in that region.

His relics were later translated to the Monastery of Saint Pishoy in Wadi El Natrun, one of the four ancient monasteries of Scetis that remain active. Coptic tradition holds that his body has remained incorrupt, and it is still enshrined at that monastery, a major pilgrimage site of the Coptic Orthodox Church. He is commemorated on 8 Abib in the Coptic Synaxarium; a further commemoration on 13 Kiahk marks the relocation of his body. He was never a bishop, patriarch, or pope, but a monk and abba whose cult spread throughout Coptic Christianity. The monastery that bears his name later served at times as a residence of Coptic popes, further tying his memory to the life of the Coptic Church. Historical knowledge of Pishoy depends largely on the Coptic Synaxarium and later hagiography rather than on contemporary documentary records; the outline of a Delta-born monk of Scetis who died in Middle Egypt in the early fifth century is the consistent core of the tradition.