Longinus

Start of the Life of Saints Longinus and Lucius the Ascetics in Morgan, MS M.579, fol. 88v, a manuscript made in Egypt sometime before 30 August 823. Longinus (; 451–457) was the hegumenos (superior or abbot) of the Enaton, a monastic community outside Alexandria in Roman Egypt. He is the subject of a Sahidic Coptic hagiography, the Life of Saints Longinus and Lucius the Ascetics, and a Sahidic homily, In Honour of Longinus, by Bishop Basil of Oxyrhynchus.

Biography According to his Life, which is considered historically reliable, Longinus was from Lycia in Cilicia. He and his teacher, Lucius the Ascetic, who is also the subject of the hagiography, worked so many miracles in Syria that they became quite famous. To escape their fame, they fled to the Enaton in Egypt. At the Enaton, Longinus made rope, which he sold to sailors. The profits he distributed as alms. He was elected hegumenos before the Council of Chalcedon (451) deposed Patriarch Dioscorus I of Alexandria. After Dioscorus sent a statement of his Miaphysite faith to the Enaton, Longinus led the opposition to the council. He staunchly opposed the Emperor Marcian and played a role in electing a rival anti-Chalcedonian patriarch, Timothy II, to succeed Dioscorus. He was still hegumenos when Marcian died in 457.