Menassa Youhanna
Egyptian priest, theologian and historian (1899–1930)
Father Menassa Youhanna (1899–1930) was a Coptic priest, historian and theologian, most noted for his work on the history of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria.
Biography
He was born in August, 1899 in Mallawi in Upper Egypt and died on Friday May 16, 1930, at the age of 30. Born in a Coptic Orthodox family, his father was also a priest.
Abouna is his informative title meaning our father in Egyptian Arabic which is used among Copts to call any Priest in the Coptic Orthodox Church, and until the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it could be used to call a Metropolitan, a Bishop or even the Pope by the word Abouna meaning my father. This has been replaced now by the word sayedna meaning our master for The Pope and any other Bishop.
At the unusually young age of 16, he joined the newly opened Coptic Theological Seminary in Cairo. After completing his studies there, he returned to Mallawi to serve as a preacher. He was ordained to the priesthood on January 25, 1925.
Books
His book about the History of the Coptic Orthodox Church is very comprehensive; in about five hundred and thirty pages he managed to give a summary of the Church's history over nineteen centuries without omitting important details.
He depended on both Coptic and non Coptic sources for his work and in his account of the history of the Coptic Church he tried to be non-biased although his compassion towards his church is very noticeable.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Menassa Youhanna” as egyptian priest, theologian and historian (1899–1930). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as egyptian priest, theologian and historian (1899–1930). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4117888. VIAF identifies the subject as 55537532. The Library of Congress control number is n83311935. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1899, 1930 and 1925.
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This entry incorporates text from “Menassa Youhanna” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.