Apparitions at Deir Al-Maghti in Lower Egypt (II)

As of the first year after the foundation of the monastery, the monks, gathered together in the church, had seen a column of light on the altar transform itself into a luminous boat carrying the Virgin, the angels, the saints (in particular the Apostles and the holy knights, Theodore, George and Mercury), and also the Holy Innocents exterminated on the order of Herod. The Virgin asked the monks to associate the people in this miracle and a pilgrimage was organized. It lasted five days and brought together, in immense camping sites; Egyptian, Ethiopian, Maronite, Greek, Latin and even some Muslim pilgrims. The faithful adopted the habit of throwing their turbans and scarves towards the cupola of the church at the moment of the apparition, and sometimes the Virgin agreed to touch one or the other of these. Moreover each pilgrim could ask and obtain to see, as they gathered around Our Lady, his or her departed parents or close relations, as if they were alive. The apparitions of the Al-Maghti monastery were well known in Ethiopia, thanks to the Book of the Miracles of Mary and they are even mentioned in the Ethiopian Synaxair, dated the 21st of Genbot or the 21st of Bachnas (May 29th ). According to this Book of the Miracles, confirmed by geographer Al-Maqrizi (d. 1441), the monastery was destroyed in 1438, during the Ramadan, on the order of the Sultan Mameluke Barsbay Al-Malik Al-Ashraf Sayf Ad-Dan.