The Precious Pearls: An Explanation of the Rites and Beliefs of the Coptic Orthodox Church

First published in Cairo in 1909, The Precious Pearls is Hegumen Yūḥannā Salāma’s expansive guide to the rites and beliefs of the Coptic Orthodox Church. Written for readers who wanted not only to perform the Church’s rites but also to understand their meaning, it is at once devotional, historical, apologetic, and practical.

Salāma begins with the Church’s order, buildings, clergy, prayer, psalmody, incense, and the Divine Liturgy. He then turns to Baptism, Chrismation, Marriage, Confession, Anointing, Priesthood, Holy Week, fasts, feasts, prayer for the departed, and intercession. Throughout, he draws on Scripture, patristic testimony, ecclesiastical history, and theological argument to explain not only what the Church does, but why.

The work is unmistakably a book of its period. Salāma compares Coptic practice with Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant sources and draws on canons, service books, and patristic collections available to him. His explanations preserve a valuable early twentieth-century witness to the inherited life of his Church.

Presented here as one combined English volume, the edition preserves the sweep and historical voice of Salāma’s original two-part study. It offers clergy, students, and thoughtful readers a richly detailed path through his account of Coptic worship, doctrine, practice, and memory.

“They are treasures filled with spiritual jewels.” — Hegumen Yūḥannā Salāma