BA, MLIS, MA, PhD
Fr Arsenius graduated with a PhD from the University of Vienna and is a prolific author and authority on Coptic Liturgical Studies. He is currently the Chair of Liturgical Studies at St. Athanasius & St. Cyril Coptic Orthodox Theological School in California. He has been the recipient of a number of Postdoctoral Fellowships, including at the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, University of Regensburg, Germany, and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. He has lectured in Liturgical Studies at St. Paul University, Ontario, Holy Transfiguration College, Washington, D.C., the Antiochian House of Studies, Bolivar, PA, in addition to being a sessional lecturer at SAC. His current projects include an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation funded research on The Ritual Celebration of Scripture from Late Antique to Medieval Egypt, and cataloguing liturgical manuscripts, as part of the Yale University project to catalogue the collection of manuscripts at the Monastery of the Syrians (al-Suryān) in Wādī al-Naṭrūn, Egypt.
Selected Books
(2023) Analecta Hymnica Coptica: Bohairic Hymns for the Liturgical Year from Medieval Chant Manuscripts. CSCO 705, Scriptores coptici 56 (Leuven: Peeters).
(2022) Guides to the Eucharist in Medieval Egypt: Three Arabic Commentaries on the Coptic Liturgy (New York: Fordham University Press).
(2020) The Presentation of the Lamb: The Prothesis and Preparatory Rites of the Coptic Liturgy, Studies in Eastern Christian Liturgies 2 (Münster: Aschendorff).
Selected peer-reviewed journal articles/book chapters
(forthcoming) “A Typology of Bohairic Coptic Euchologia: Introduction to a Project & Preliminary Results,” in Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of the Society of Oriental Liturgy, Thessaloniki, 13–18 June, 2022, Studies in Eastern Christian Liturgies 6 (Münster: Aschendorff).
(forthcoming) “Coptic Orthodox Church Music in the West,” in The Oxford Handbook of Music and Christian Theology, edited by Martin Clarke and Alexander Lingas.
(forthcoming) “‘And They Shall Stand Bareheaded’: On the Historical Development of Liturgical HeadCovering in the Coptic Rite,” in Proceedings of the Eleventh International Congress of Coptic Studies, Claremont, California, July 25th–30th, 2016, ed. Hany N. Takla, et al, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta (Leuven: Peeters).
(2021) With Ágnes T. Mihálykó, “A Prayer for the Preparation of the Priest and the First Prayer of the Morning in Sahidic Coptic (P.Ilves Copt. 8),” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 87 (2021): 353–370.
(2020) “‘We will Enter into His Dwelling Place’: Reconstructing the History of the Chants at the Transfer of the Gifts in Egypt,” in Let us be Attentive! Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of the Society of Oriental Liturgy Prešov (Slovakia), 9–14 July 2018, ed. Martin Lüstraeten, Brian Butcher, and Steven Hawkes-Teeples, Studies in Eastern Christian Liturgies 1 (Münster: Aschendorff), 173–187.
(2019) “Chancen und Herausforderungen für die Ökumene: Einige Bemerkungen aus der koptischen liturgischen Tradition,” Ostkirchliche Studien 68 (2019): 307–326.
(2019) “Prostrating, Processing, and Burying: The Human Body and its Participation in the Coptic Tradition for Great Friday,” in Le corps humain dans la liturgie: 65e Semaine d’études liturgiques, Paris, Institut Saint-Serge, 2–5 juillet 2018, ed. André Lossky, Goran Sekulovski, and Thomas Pott, Studia Oecumenica Friburgensia 90 (Münster: Aschendorff), 179–191.
(2018) “Patriarcha Revisited: The Prothesis of the Coptic Patriarchal Liturgy in Sources of the 15th–16th Centuries,” Le Muséon 131, no. 3–4 (2018): 279–312.