Deir Abu Maqar
The International Carlo Scarpa Prize for Gardens 2005
edited by Domenico Luciani with Patrizia Boschiero
Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche
Treviso 2005
80 pages
73 illustrations in colour and 19 black and white
Italian edition
available on request from the Foundation
Deir Abu Maqar is the Egyptian monastery of Saint Macarius which, together with Deir el Baramus, Deir Amba Bishoi and Deir es Suriani, makes up a group of Coptic Christian monastic settlements founded in the second half of the 4th century in the Wadi en-Natrun, a saltpetre-rich depression on the desert road between Alexandria and Cairo to the west of the Nile delta.
The uninterrupted history of Coptic Christian monasticism over a period of seventeen centuries is of crucial importance, also from the point of view of the physical form and life of the places where it developed and flourished.
Their foundation marks one of the later stages of a movement that started in the early centuries of the Christian era with the restive and critical attitude of part of the peasant class, their enthusiastic embracing of the Christian message, their rejection of the existing order and their devising of an alternative based on an ascetic lifestyle pursued outside the social physical framework of the village, first nearby and then further and further away, in the desert.
Contents
Il Premio Internazionale Carlo Scarpa per il Giardino, 4
Regolamento e giuria, 5
La sedicesima edizione, 6
Motivazione della giuria (in lingua italiana, araba, inglese), 7
Sulle origini del monachesimo, di Graham Gould, 18
Monachesimo ed espansione del cristianesimo, di Peter Brown, 20
Wadi en-Natrun, di Otto Meinardus, 25
Deir Abu Maqar, una breve storia del monastero, di Matta El Meskin, 30
La regola del monastero, 41
Giuseppe Dossetti a San Macario, 52
Matta El Meskin, un padre del deserto, di Enzo Bianchi, 53
Le regola di Macario, 56
Il monastero di San Macario, di Alfred J. Butler, 58
Guida ai monumenti religiosi antichi, 64
Gli edifici moderni, 68
Testimonianze, 70
Bibliografia, 72
Glossario, 76
Referenze fotografiche, 76
The International Carlo Scarpa Prize for Gardens. Regulations, 77
