The role of the Church and monasticism in the officialization of Coptic (end)
As the analysis of the wills of Abraam and Victor shows, the switch from Greek to Coptic did not take place in a clear-cut, definitive manner, simply by substituting one for the other. In fact, the anomalies found in both documents show the process of autonomization of Coptic documentary practice at work.
Leaving the context of the monasteries, this process spread to the society of clerics and laymen alike, as attested by the third and final file examined, that of the Coptic ostraca of Bishop Abraam (identical to the testator encountered in the previous file), half of which consists of legal or judicial documents dating from 595 to 621. These texts are the most striking proof that the Church, through some of its bishops, often from monastic backgrounds, felt the need to equip itself with a panoply of legal instruments, corresponding to its missions and recognized by the administration, by acclimatizing Greek documentary genres to Coptic through a whole process of typological and lexical adaptation. Alongside the few attempts made from the 6thcentury onwards in secular society, these bishops and their entourage helped to pave the way and "unburden" Coptic by giving it more and more of the prestige of which Greek had a monopoly. They anticipated what would happen after the Arab conquest, when the link between Egypt and Byzantium would be broken once and for all, and Coptic would no longer be hindered in its legal autonomy.
As we have seen throughout this year, the visibility that Coptic has thus acquired is not the result of a tense or conflictual relationship with Greek, but of an internal dynamic in its development, which, thanks to the socio-cultural and institutional mutations of Late Antiquity, has led it to extend its field of action and free itself from the prestige of Greek.
