Tuki, Rafäel

TUKI, RAFÄEL. - Coptic bishop of Arsinoe, scholar and liturgist, b. in Girga (Upper Egypt) into a heterodox Coptic family in 1701, d. in Rome on 16 October 1787.

A deacon at the age of nineteen, he abjured heresy into the hands of Fr. Claude Sicard S.J. The Franciscans of the apostolic prefecture of Upper Egypt sent him in 1724 to the Urban College of Propaganda Fide, in Rome, where he obtained his degree in theology on 27 May 1735. Ordained a priest on 5 June of the same year, he was immediately entrusted by the Congregation of Propaganda with the edition of the Euchologium, containing the three anaphoras of the Coptic Alexandrian rite (Rome 1736). Having returned to Egypt in May 1737, he devoted himself to the apostolate for the adherence of the Coptic patriarch John XVII to the Roman Church. Summoned to Rome by the Congregation in 1739, he was professor of the Coptic language at the Urban College for over 40 years. The fruit of his teaching is: Rudimenta linguae coptae sive negyptiacae ad usum Collegii Urbani de Propaganda Fide (Rome 1778). He devoted himself to the monumental edition of the liturgical books of the Church of Alexandria: the Psalter with the canticles (1744); the Diurnal (1750), the first part of the translation of the Vulgate into Arabic, Pentateuch, Judges, Ruth, Kings, Paralipomena, Ezra and Tobit (1752); the first part of the Coptic Pontifical in 1761 and the second part in 1762; the Ritual of the Sacraments (1763) and the Theotokia (1764).

At the Vatican Library he devoted himself to copying Arabic and Coptic manuscripts and codices. He prepared a revision and correction of the "Coptic Synaxarium," still unpublished, and an Arabic translation of the Roman Martyrology (1763). He translated into Arabic the commentaries of St. Gregory of Nyssa on the Song of Songs, on Ecclesiastes and on the Oratio Dominica. He was appointed titular bishop of Arsinoe in 1761.

Giulio Basetti Sani