The Crusaders conquer Egypt; how do they treat the Copts?

Even for just a short time, only for a few years. Let's just say they have a little more luck when trying to conquer Egypt, and manage to take over the Nile Delta. There are more Copts in Upper Egypt, IIRC, but there are and were some in the Delta, as well. How are the Copts treated by the Crusaders, and what is the relation between the Crusaders and the Copts? How do the Copts view the Crusaders?
 

Orry

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unfortunetly there would be many who treat them as Heretics - it is a good excuse to seize their land and assets.

My understanding is that one of the reasons Egypt was conqured by the muslims in the first place was that the copts were oppressed and had little interest in supporting their 'overlords'.
 
The crusaders would most likely treat the copts the same way they treated the Eastern Orthodox's during the fourth crusade. They aren't Catholic so they're fair game for anything they want to do.
 
Considering that the 4th crusade is the only one that turned into an attack on nonCatholic Christians, and on most of the others relations with the Orthodox were considerably better, I doubt that the Crusaders would unnecessarily agitate the Copts. They certainly wouldn't treat them as equals, but if they have made inroads in Egypt I assume that the Copts have already been given reason to believe that their lives will be better with the Crusaders. I'd use Cyprus as the most similar OTL occurance, where the Orthodox were an underclass, but not opressed (or at least not enough so to turn on the crusaders).
 
The Fourth Crusade is not a good comparison to determine how Crusaders would treat the Copts. Several important elements are unique to the sack of Constantinople.

1) Over a century of stories of how perfidious Greeks betrayed or undermined the Crusader efforts.

2) The huge debts wrung up by the Fourth Crusaders that needed payment.

3) The feelings by the Fourth Crusaders that they had been personally betrayed by not being paid for their efforts to restore Isaac II and Alexios IV to the throne.

4) The extremely bad strategic situation of the Crusaders that gave them the options of being eventually massacred, or seizing absolute power for themselves.

This explains the pillaging and conquest, not simply because they were Orthodox.

In the actual Crusader states, the Crusaders were actually fairly tolerant of the various religions living there because they knew they relied on them for taxes, supplies, and survival. This included Orthodox and Syriac Christians. The Copts would be treated the same way.

Of course, the major problem with the Copts is that as monophysites, they can't be in communion with Rome since they deny Chalcedon. There will eventually be tension there, as at some point Rome will attempt to bring the Coptic Church into orthodoxy. I think it will be some time before they do that though. So while the Coptic Church won't flourish, it won't necessarily be any worse than under the Muslims for some time. If the Crusades will rule Egypt permanently, we may not see any real trouble for 1-2 centuries. The Crusaders will be too busy simply keeping Egypt at peace to be bothered with forcing the Copts to convert.
 
The Fourth Crusade is not a good comparison to determine how Crusaders would treat the Copts. Several important elements are unique to the sack of Constantinople.

1) Over a century of stories of how perfidious Greeks betrayed or undermined the Crusader efforts.

2) The huge debts wrung up by the Fourth Crusaders that needed payment.

3) The feelings by the Fourth Crusaders that they had been personally betrayed by not being paid for their efforts to restore Isaac II and Alexios IV to the throne.

4) The extremely bad strategic situation of the Crusaders that gave them the options of being eventually massacred, or seizing absolute power for themselves.

This explains the pillaging and conquest, not simply because they were Orthodox.

In the actual Crusader states, the Crusaders were actually fairly tolerant of the various religions living there because they knew they relied on them for taxes, supplies, and survival. This included Orthodox and Syriac Christians. The Copts would be treated the same way.

Of course, the major problem with the Copts is that as monophysites, they can't be in communion with Rome since they deny Chalcedon. There will eventually be tension there, as at some point Rome will attempt to bring the Coptic Church into orthodoxy. I think it will be some time before they do that though. So while the Coptic Church won't flourish, it won't necessarily be any worse than under the Muslims for some time. If the Crusades will rule Egypt permanently, we may not see any real trouble for 1-2 centuries. The Crusaders will be too busy simply keeping Egypt at peace to be bothered with forcing the Copts to convert.

Its more likely that Catholic crusaders go Copt, in fact, to give themselves a local base for rule.

If crusaders rule egypt for any length of time, they're going to go Coptic somehow, whether that's total embrace of the Coptic Church or else some kind of compromise with Rome, a nilotic version of the Uniates for instance, or maybe some kind of concordat involving a Roman declaration that the teachings of the Copts are compatible with orthodoxy in return for formal Coptic recognition of the papacy. The equivalent would be some of the OTL arrangements between the papacy and Maronite Christians.
 
Much the same as the Levantine Crusader states treated their monophysite Christians, i.e. below the Greeks but above the Jews and Muslims in cities, and the same as all the peasantry in the countryside.
 
The Crusaders weren't terrible overlords, actually. They were brutal conquerors but they didn't harass local Christian populations afterwards in any significant way, and the Maronites joined the Roman church precisely during the Crusading era.
 
The Crusaders of Levant had to deal with both Melchite Orthodox Christians, excommunicated since 1054, and with Monophysites, excommunicated since 451 or so.

I understand that even though they were not accepted as equal to Catholics, they were at least favoured over Muslims and Jews.

So for Egyptian Copts, any Muslim regime was going to privilege all Muslims better than Copts - even if the Fatimids privileged their own Shiites over Sunnites. Whereas any Christian regime was going to privilege all Christians, even Copts, better than Muslims.

How sustainable would Crusader Egypt be?
 
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