St. Athanasius
Bishop of Alexandria; Confessor and Doctor of the Church; born c. 296; died 2
May, 373. Athanasius was the greatest champion of Catholic belief on the subject
of the Incarnation that the Church has ever known and in his lifetime earned the
characteristic title of "Father of Orthodoxy", by which he has been
distinguished ever since. While the chronology of his career still remains for
the most part a hopelessly involved problem, the fullest material for an account
of the main achievements of his life will be found in his collected writings and
in the contemporary records of his time. He was born, it would seem, in
Alexandria, most probably between the years 296 and 298. An earlier date, 293,
is sometimes assigned as the more certain year of his birth; and it is supported
apparently by the authority of the "Coptic Fragment" (published by Dr. O. von
Lemm among the Mémoires de l'académie impériale des sciences de S. Péterbourg,
1888) and corroborated by the undoubted maturity of judgement revealed in the
two treatises "Contra Gentes" and "De Incarnatione", which were admittedly
written about the year 318 before Arianism as a movement had begun to make
itself felt. It must be remembered, however, that in two distinct passages of
his writings (Hist. Ar., lxiv, and De Syn., xviii) Athanasius shrinks from
speaking as a witness at first hand of the persecution which had broken out
under Maximian in 303; for in referring to the events of this period he makes no
direct appeal to his own personal recollections, but falls back, rather, on
tradition. Such reserve would scarcely be intelligible, if, on the hypothesis of
the earlier date, the Saint had been then a boy fully ten years old. Besides,
there must have been some semblance of a foundation in fact for the charge
brought against him by his accusers in after-life (Index to the Festal Letters)
that at the times of his consecration to the episcopate in 328 he had not yet
attained the canonical age of thirty years. These considerations, therefore,
even if they are found to be not entirely convincing, would seem to make it
likely that he was born not earlier than 296 nor later than 298.
It is impossible to speak more than conjecturally of his family. Of the claim
that it was both prominent and well-to-do, we can only observe that the
tradition to the effect is not contradicted by such scanty details as can be
gleaned from the saint's writings. Those writings undoubtedly betray evidences
of the sort of education that was given, for the most part, only to children and
youths of a better class. It began with grammar, went on to rhetoric, and
received its final touches under some one of the more fashionable lecturers in
the philosophic schools. It is possible, of course, that he owed his remarkable
training in letters to his saintly predecessor's favour, if not to his personal
care. But Athanasius was one of those rare personalities that derive
incomparably more from their own native gifts of intellect and character than
from the fortuitousness of descent or environment. His career almost personifies
a crisis in the history of Christianity; and he may be said rather to have
shaped the events in which he took part than to have been shaped by them. Yet it
would be misleading to urge that he was in no notable sense a debtor to the time
and place of his birth. The Alexandria of his boyhood was an epitome,
intellectually, morally, and politically, of that ethnically many-coloured
Graeco-Roman world, over which the Church of the fourth and fifth centuries was
beginning at last, with undismayed consciousness, after nearly three hundred
years of unwearying propagandism, to realize its supremacy. It was, moreover,
the most important centre of trade in the whole empire; and its primacy as an
emporium of ideas was more commanding than that of Rome or Constantinople,
Antioch or Marseilles. Already, in obedience to an instinct of which one can
scarcely determine the full significance without studying the subsequent
development of Catholicism, its famous "Catechetical School", while sacrificing
no jot or tittle or that passion for orthodoxy which it had imbibed from
Pantænus, Clement, and Origen, had begun to take on an almost secular character
in the comprehensiveness of its interests, and had counted pagans of influence
among its serious auditors (Eusebius, Church History VI.19).
To have been born and brought up in such an atmosphere of philosophizing
Christianity was, in spite of the dangers it involved, the timeliest and most
liberal of educations; and there is, as we have intimated, abundant evidence in
the saint's writings to testify to the ready response which all the better
influences of the place must have found in the heart and mind of the growing
boy. Athanasius seems to have been brought early in life under the immediate
supervision of the ecclesiastical authorities of his native city. Whether his
long intimacy with Bishop Alexander began in childhood, we have no means of
judging; but a story which pretends to describe the circumstances of his first
introduction to that prelate has been preserved for us by Rufinus (Hist. Eccl.,
I, xiv). The bishop, so the tale runs, had invited a number of brother prelates
to meet him at breakfast after a great religious function on the anniversary of
the martyrdom of St. Peter, a recent predecessor in the See of Alexandria. While
Alexander was waiting for his guests to arrive, he stood by a window, watching a
group of boys at play on the seashore below the house. He had not observed them
long before he discovered that they were imitating, evidently with no thought of
irreverence, the elaborate ritual of Christian baptism. (Cf. Bunsen's
"Christianity and Mankind", London, 1854, VI, 465; Denzinger, "Ritus
Orientalium" in verb.; Butler's "Ancient Coptic Churches", II, 268 et sqq.;
"Bapteme chez les Coptes", "Dict. Theol. Cath.", Col. 244, 245). He therefore
sent for the children and had them brought into his presence. In the
investigation that followed it was discovered that one of the boys, who was no
other than the future Primate of Alexandria, had acted the part of the bishop,
and in that character had actually baptized several of his companions in the
course of their play. Alexander, who seems to have been unaccountably puzzled
over the answers he received to his inquiries, determined to recognize the
make-believe baptisms as genuine; and decided that Athanasius and his
playfellows should go into training in order to fit themselves for a clerical
career. The Bollandists deal gravely with this story; and writers as difficult
to satisfy as Archdeacon Farrar and the late Dean Stanley are ready to accept it
as bearing on its face "every indication of truth" (Farrar, "Lives of the
Fathers", I, 337; Stanley, "East. Ch." 264). But whether in its present form, or
in the modified version to be found in Socrates (I, xv), who omits all reference
to the baptism and says that the game was "an imitation of the priesthood and
the order of consecrated persons", the tale raises a number of chronological
difficulties and suggests even graver questions.
Perhaps a not impossible explanation of its origin may be found in the theory
that it was one of the many floating myths set in movement by popular
imagination to account for the marked bias towards an ecclesiastical career
which seems to have characterized the early boyhood of the future champion of
the Faith. Sozomen speaks of his "fitness for the priesthood", and calls
attention to the significant circumstance that he was "from his tenderest years
practically self-taught". "Not long after this," adds the same authority, the
Bishop Alexander "invited Athanasius to be his commensal and secretary. He had
been well educated, and was versed in grammar and rhetoric, and had already,
while still a young man, and before reaching the episcopate, given proof to
those who dwelt with him of his wisdom and acumen" (Soz., II, xvii). That
"wisdom and acumen" manifested themselves in a various environment. While still
a levite under Alexander's care, he seems to have been brought for a while into
close relations with some of the solitaries of the Egyptian desert, and in
particular with the great St. Anthony, whose life he is said to have written.
The evidence both of the intimacy and for the authorship of the life in question
has been challenged, chiefly by non-Catholic writers, on the ground that the
famous "Vita" shows signs of interpolation. Whatever we may think of the
arguments on the subject, it is impossible to deny that the monastic idea
appealed powerfully to the young cleric's temperament, and that he himself in
after years was not only at home when duty or accident threw him among the
solitaries, but was so monastically self-disciplined in his habits as to be
spoken of as an "ascetic" (Apol. c. Arian., vi). In fourth-century usage the
word would have a definiteness of connotation not easily determinable today.
(See ASCETICISM).
It is not surprising that one who was called to fill so large a place in the
history of his time should have impressed the very form and feature of his
personality, so to say, upon the imagination of his contemporaries. St. Gregory
Nazianzen is not the only writer who has described him for us (Orat. xxi, 8). A
contemptuous phrase of the Emperor Julian's (Epist., li) serves unintentionally
to corroborate the picture drawn by kindlier observers. He was slightly below
the middle height, spare in build, but well-knit, and intensely energetic. He
had a finely shaped head, set off with a thin growth of auburn hair, a small but
sensitively mobile mouth, an aquiline nose, and eyes of intense but kindly
brilliancy. He had a ready wit, was quick in intuition, easy and affable in
manner, pleasant in conversation, keen, and, perhaps, somewhat too unsparing in
debate. (Besides the references already cited, see the detailed description
given in the January Menaion quotes in the Bollandist life. Julian the Apostate,
in the letter alluded to above sneers at the diminutiveness of his person — mede
aner, all anthropiokos euteles, he writes.) In addition to these qualities, he
was conspicuous for two others to which even his enemies bore unwilling
testimony. He was endowed with a sense of humour that could be as mordant — we
had almost said as sardonic — as it seems to have been spontaneous and
unfailing; and his courage was of the sort that never falters, even in the most
disheartening hour of defeat. There is one other note in this highly gifted and
many-sided personality to which everything else in his nature literally
ministered, and which must be kept steadily in view, if we would possess the key
to his character and writing and understand the extraordinary significance of
his career in the history of the Christian Church. He was by instinct neither a
liberal nor a conservative in theology. Indeed the terms have a singular
inappropriateness as applied to a temperament like his. From first to last he
cared greatly for one thing and one thing only; the integrity of his Catholic
creed. The religion it engendered in him was obviously — considering the traits
by which we have tried to depict him — of a passionate and consuming sort. It
began and ended in devotion to the Divinity of Jesus Christ. He was scarcely out
of his teens, and certainly not in more than deacon's orders, when he published
two treatises, in which his mind seemed to strike the keynote of all its riper
after-utterances on the subject of the Catholic Faith. The "Contra Gentes" and
the "Oratio de Incarnatione" — to give them the Latin appellations by which they
are more commonly cited — were written some time between the years 318 and 323.
St. Jerome (De Viris Illust.) refers to them under a common title, as "Adversum
Gentes Duo Libri", thus leaving his readers to gather the impression which an
analysis of the contents of both books certainly seems to justify, that the two
treatises are in reality one.
As a plea for the Christian position, addressed chiefly to both Gentiles and
Jews, the young deacon's apology, while undoubtedly reminiscential in methods
and ideas of Origen and the earlier Alexandrians, is, nevertheless, strongly
individual and almost pietistic in tone. Though it deals with the Incarnation,
it is silent on most of those ulterior problems in defence of which Athanasius
was soon to be summoned by the force of events and the fervour of his own faith
to devote the best energies of his life. The work contains no explicit
discussion of the nature of the Word's Sonship, for instance; no attempt to draw
out the character of Our Lord's relation to the Father; nothing, in short, of
those Christological questions upon which he was to speak with such splendid and
courageous clearness in time of shifting formularies and undetermined views. Yet
those ideas must have been in the air (Soz., I, xv) for, some time between the
years 318 and 320, Arius, a native of Libya (Epiphanius, Haer., lxix) and priest
of the Alexandrian Church, who had already fallen under censure for his part in
the Meletian troubles which broke out during the episcopate of St. Peter, and
whose teachings had succeeded in making dangerous headway, even among "the
consecrated virgins" of St. Mark's see (Epiphanius, Haer., lxix; Socrates,
Church History I.6), accused Bishop Alexander of Sabellianism. Arius, who seems
to have presumed on the charitable tolerance of the primate, was at length
deposed (Apol. c. Ar., vi) in a synod consisting of more than one hundred
bishops of Egypt and Libya (Depositio Ar., 3). The condemned heresiarch withdrew
first to Palestine and afterwards to Bithynia, where, under the protection of
Eusebius of Nicomedia and his other "Collucianists", he was able to increase his
already remarkable influence, while his friends were endeavouring to prepare a
way for his forcible reinstatement as priest of the Alexandrian Church.
Athanasius, though only in deacon's order, must have taken no subordinate part
in these events. He was the trusted secretary and advisor of Alexander, and his
name appears in the list of those who signed the encyclical letter subsequently
issued by the primate and his colleagues to offset the growing prestige of the
new teaching, and the momentum it was beginning to acquire from the ostentatious
patronage extended to the deposed Arius by the Eusebian faction. Indeed, it is
to this party and to the leverage it was able to exercise at the emperor's court
that the subsequent importance of Arianism as a political, rather than a
religious, movement seems primarily to be due.
The heresy, of course, had its supposedly philosophic basis, which has been
ascribed by authors, ancient and modern, to the most opposite sources. St.
Epiphanius characterizes it as a kind of revived Aristoteleanism (Haer., lxvii
and lxxvi); and the same view is practically held by Socrates (Church History
II.35), Theodoret (Haer. Fab., IV, iii), and St. Basil (Against Eunomius I.9).
On the other hand, a theologian as broadly read as Petavius (De Trin., I, viii,
2) has no hesitation in deriving it from Platonism; Newman in turn (Arians of
the Fourth Cent., 4 ed., 109) sees in it the influence of Jewish prejudices
rationalized by the aid of Aristotelean ideas; while Robertson (Sel. Writ. and
Let. of Ath. Proleg., 27) observes that the "common theology", which was
invariably opposed to it, "borrowed its philosophical principles and method from
the Platonists." These apparently conflicting statements could, no doubt, be
easily adjusted; but the truth is that the prestige of Arianism never lay in its
ideas. From whatever school it may have been logically derived, the sect, as a
sect, was cradled and nurtured in intrigue. Save in some few instances, which
can be accounted for on quite other grounds, its prophets relied more upon
curial influence than upon piety, or Scriptural knowledge, or dialectics. That
must be borne constantly in mind, if we would not move distractedly through the
bewildering maze of events that make up the life of Athanasius for the next
half-century to come. It is his peculiar merit that he not only saw the drift of
things from the very beginning, but was confident of the issue down to the last
(Apol. c. Ar., c.). His insight and courage proved almost as efficient a bulwark
to the Christian Church in the world as did his singularly lucid grasp of
traditional Catholic belief. His opportunity came in the year 325, when the
Emperor Constantine, in the hope of putting an end to the scandalous debates
that were disturbing the peace of the Church, met the prelates of the entire
Catholic world in council at Nicaea.
The great council convoked at this juncture was something more than a pivotal
event in the history of Christianity. Its sudden, and, in one sense, almost
unpremeditated adoption of a quasi-philosophic and non-Scriptural term —
homoousion — to express the character of orthodox belief in the Person of the
historic Christ, by defining Him to be identical in substance, or co-essential,
with the Father, together with its confident appeal to the emperor to lend the
sanction of his authority to the decrees and pronouncements by which it hoped to
safeguard this more explicit profession of the ancient Faith, had consequences
of the gravest import, not only to the world of ideas, but to the world of
politics as well. By the official promulgation to the term homoöusion,
theological speculation received a fresh but subtle impetus which made itself
felt long after Athanasius and his supporters had passed away; while the appeal
to the secular arm inaugurated a policy which endured practically without change
of scope down to the publication of the Vatican decrees in our own time. In one
sense, and that a very deep and vital one, both the definition and the policy
were inevitable. It was inevitable in the order of religious ideas that any
break in logical continuity should be met by inquiry and protest. It was just as
inevitable that the protest, to be effective, should receive some countenance
from a power which up to that moment had affected to regulate all the graver
circumstances of life (cf. Harnack, Hist. Dog., III, 146, note; Buchanan's tr.).
As Newman has remarked: "The Church could not meet together in one, without
entering into a sort of negotiation with the power that be; who jealousy it is
the duty of Christians, both as individuals and as a body, if possible, to
dispel" (Arians of the Fourth Cent., 4 ed., 241). Athanasius, though not yet in
priest's orders, accompanied Alexander to the council in the character of
secretary and theological adviser. He was not, of course, the originator of the
famous homoösion. The term had been proposed in a non-obvious and illegitimate
sense by Paul of Samosata to the Father at Antioch, and had been rejected by
them as savouring of materialistic conceptions of the Godhead (cf. Athan., "De
Syn., " xliii; Newman, "Arians of the Fourth Cent., " 4 ed., 184-196; Petav. "De
Trin., " IV, v, sect. 3; Robertson, "Sel. Writ. and Let. Athan. Proleg.", 30
sqq.).
It may even be questioned whether, if left to his own logical instincts,
Athanasius would have suggested an orthodox revival of the term at all ("De
Decretis", 19; "Orat. c. Ar.", ii, 32; "Ad Monachos", 2). His writings, composed
during the forty-six critical years of his episcopate, show a very sparing use
of the word; and though, as Newman (Arians of the Fourth Cent., 4 ed., 236)
reminds us, "the authentic account of the proceedings" that took place is not
extant, there is nevertheless abundant evidence in support of the common view
that it had been unexpectedly forced upon the notice of the bishops, Arian and
orthodox, in the great synod by Constantine's proposal to account the creed
submitted by Eusebius of Caesarea, with the addition of the homoösion, as a
safeguard against possible vagueness. The suggestion had in all probability come
from Hosius (cf. "Epist. Eusebii.", in the appendix to the "De Decretis", sect.
4; Socrates, Church History I.8 and III.7; Theodoret, Church History I;
Athanasius; "Arians of the Fourth Cent.", 6, n. 42; outos ten en Nikaia pistin
exetheto, says the saint, quoting his opponents); but Athanasius, in common with
the leaders of the orthodox party, loyally accepted the term as expressive of
the traditional sense in which the Church had always held Jesus Christ to be the
Son of God. The conspicuous abilities displayed in the Nicaean debates and the
character for courage and sincerity he won on all sides made the youthful cleric
henceforth a marked man (St. Greg. Naz., Orat., 21). His life could not be lived
in a corner. Five months after the close of the council the Primate of
Alexandria died; and Athanasius, quite as much in recognition of his talent, it
would appear, as in deference to the deathbed wishes of the deceased prelate,
was chosen to succeed him. His election, in spite of his extreme youth and the
opposition of a remnant of the Arian and Meletian factions in the Alexandrian
Church, was welcomed by all classes among the laity ("Apol. c. Arian", vi;
Sozomen, Church History II.17, 21, 22).
The opening years of the saint's rule were occupied with the wonted episcopal
routine of a fourth-century Egyptian bishop. Episcopal visitations, synods,
pastoral correspondence, preaching and the yearly round of church functions
consumed the bulk of his time. The only noteworthy events of which antiquity
furnishes at least probable data are connected with the successful efforts which
he made to provide a hierarchy for the newly planted church in Ethiopia
(Abyssinia) in the person of St. Frumentius (Rufinus I, ix; Soc. I, xix; Soz.,
II, xxiv), and the friendship which appears to have begun about this time
between himself and the monks of St. Pachomius. But the seeds of disaster which
the saint's piety had unflinchingly planted at Nicaea were beginning to bear a
disquieting crop at last. Already events were happening at Constantinople which
were soon to make him the most important figure of his time. Eusebius of
Nicomedia, who had fallen into disgrace and been banished by the Emperor
Constantine for his part in the earlier Arian controversies, had been recalled
from exile. After an adroit campaign of intrigue, carried on chiefly through the
instrumentality of the ladies of the imperial household, this smooth-mannered
prelate so far prevailed over Constantine as to induce him to order the recall
of Arius likewise from exile. He himself sent a characteristic letter to the
youthful Primate of Alexandria, in which he bespoke his favour for the condemned
heresiarch, who was described as a man whose opinions had been misrepresented.
These events must have happened some time about the close of the year 330.
Finally the emperor himself was persuaded to write to Athanasius, urging that
all those who were ready to submit to the definitions of Nicaea should be
re-admitted to ecclesiastical communion. This Athanasius stoutly refused to do,
alleging that there could be no fellowship between the Church and the one who
denied the Divinity of Christ.
The Bishop of Nicomedia thereupon brought various ecclesiastical and political
charges against Athanasius, which, though unmistakably refuted at their first
hearing, were afterwards refurbished and made to do service at nearly every
stage of his subsequent trials. Four of these were very definite, to wit: that
he had not reached the canonical age at the time of his consecration; that he
had imposed a linen tax upon the provinces; that his officers had, with his
connivance and authority, profaned the Sacred Mysteries in the case of an
alleged priest names Ischyras; and lastly that he had put one Arenius to death
and afterwards dismembered the body for purposes of magic. The nature of the
charges and the method of supporting them were vividly characteristic of the
age. The curious student will find them set forth in picturesque detail in the
second part of the Saint's "Apologia", or "Defense against the Arians", written
long after the events themselves, about the year 350, when the retractation of
Ursacius and Valens made their publication triumphantly opportune. The whole
unhappy story at this distance of time reads in parts more like a specimen of
late Greek romance than the account of an inquisition gravely conducted by a
synod of Christian prelates with the idea of getting at the truth of a series of
odious accusations brought against one of their number. Summoned by the
emperor's order after protracted delays extended over a period of thirty months
(Soz., II, xxv), Athanasius finally consented to meet the charges brought
against him by appearing before a synod of prelates at Tyre in the year 335.
Fifty of his suffragans went with him to vindicate his good name; but the
complexion of the ruling party in the synod made it evident that justice to the
accused was the last thing that was thought of. It can hardly be wondered at,
that Athanasius should have refused to be tried by such a court. He, therefore,
suddenly withdrew from Tyre, escaping in a boat with some faithful friends who
accompanied him to Byzantium, where he had made up his mind to present himself
to the emperor.
The circumstances in which the saint and the great catechumen met were dramatic
enough. Constantine was returning from a hunt, when Athanasius unexpectedly
stepped into the middle of the road and demanded a hearing. The astonished
emperor could hardly believe his eyes, and it needed the assurance of one of the
attendants to convince him that the petitioner was not an impostor, but none
other than the great Bishop of Alexandria himself. "Give me", said the prelate,
"a just tribunal, or allow me to meet my accusers face to face in your
presence." His request was granted. An order was peremptorily sent to the
bishops, who had tried Athanasius and, of course, condemned him in his absence,
to repair at once to the imperial city. The command reached them while they were
on their way to the great feast of the dedication of Constantine's new church at
Jerusalem. It naturally caused some consternation; but the more influential
members of the Eusebian faction never lacked either courage or resourcefulness.
The saint was taken at his word; and the old charges were renewed in the hearing
of the emperor himself. Athanasius was condemned to go into exile at Treves,
where he was received with the utmost kindness by the saintly Bishop Maximinus
and the emperor's eldest son, Constantine. He began his journey probably in the
month of February, 336, and arrived on the banks of the Moselle in the late
autumn of the same year. His exile lasted nearly two years and a half. Public
opinion in his own diocese remained loyal to him during all that time. It was
not the least eloquent testimony to the essential worth of his character that he
could inspire such faith. Constantine's treatment of Athanasius at this crisis
in his fortunes has always been difficult to understand. Affecting, on the one
hand, a show of indignation, as if he really believed in the political charge
brought against the saint, he, on the other hand, refused to appoint a successor
to the Alexandrian See, a thing which he might in consistency have been obliged
to do had he taken seriously the condemnation proceedings carried through by the
Eusebians at Tyre.
Meanwhile events of the greatest importance had taken place. Arius had died amid
startlingly dramatic circumstances at Constantinople in 336; and the death of
Constantine himself had followed, on the 22nd of May the year after. Some three
weeks later the younger Constantine invited the exiled primate to return to his
see; and by the end of November of the same year Athanasius was once more
established in his episcopal city. His return was the occasion of great
rejoicing. The people, as he himself tells us, ran in crowds to see his face;
the churches were given over to a kind of jubilee; thanksgivings were offered up
everywhere; and clergy and laity accounted the day the happiest in their lives.
But already trouble was brewing in a quarter from which the saint might
reasonably have expected it. The Eusebian faction, who from this time forth loom
large as the disturbers of his peace, managed to win over to their side the
weak-minded Emperor Constantius to whom the East had been assigned in the
division of the empire that followed on the death of Constantine. The old
charges were refurbished with a graver ecclesiastical accusation added by way of
rider. Athanasius had ignored the decision of a duly authorized synod. He had
returned to his see without the summons of ecclesiastical authority (Apol. c.
Ar., loc. cit.). In the year 340, after the failure of the Eusebian malcontents
to secure the appointment of an Arian candidate of dubious reputation names
Pistus, the notorious Gregory of Cappadocia was forcibly intruded into the
Alexandrian See, and Athanasius was obliged to go into hiding. Within a very few
weeks he set out for Rome to lay his case before the Church at large. He had
made his appeal to Pope Julius, who took up his cause with a whole-heartedness
that never wavered down to the day of that holy pontiff's death. The pope
summoned a synod of bishops to meet in Rome. After a careful and detailed
examination of the entire case, the primate's innocence was proclaimed to the
Christian world.
Meanwhile the Eusebian party had met at Antioch and passed a series of decrees
framed for the sole purpose of preventing the saint's return to his see. Three
years were passed at Rome, during which time the idea of the cenobitical life,
as Athanasius had seen it practised in the deserts of Egypt, was preached to the
clerics of the West (St. Jerome, Epistle cxxvii, 5). Two years after the Roman
synod had published its decision, Athanasius was summoned to Milan by the
Emperor Constans, who laid before him the plan which Constantius had formed for
a great reunion of both the Eastern and Western Churches. Now began a time of
extraordinary activity for the Saint. Early in the year 343 we find the
undaunted exile in Gaul, whither he had gone to consult the saintly Hosius, the
great champion of orthodoxy in the West. The two together set out for the
Council of Sardica which had been summoned in deference to the Roman pontiff's
wishes. At this great gathering of prelates the case of Athanasius was taken up
once more; and once more was his innocence reaffirmed. Two conciliar letters
were prepared, one to the clergy and faithful of Alexandria, and the other to
the bishops of Egypt and Libya, in which the will of the Council was made known.
Meanwhile the Eusebian party had gone to Philippopolis, where they issued an
anathema against Athanasius and his supporters. The persecution against the
orthodox party broke out with renewed vigour, and Constantius was induced to
prepare drastic measures against Athanasius and the priests who were devoted to
him. Orders were given that if the Saint attempted to re-enter his see, he
should be put to death. Athanasius, accordingly, withdrew from Sardica to
Naissus in Mysia, where he celebrated the Easter festival of the year 344. After
that he set out for Aquileia in obedience to a friendly summons from Constans,
to whom Italy had fallen in the division of the empire that followed on the
death of Constantine. Meanwhile an unexpected event had taken place which made
the return of Athanasius to his see less difficult than it had seemed for many
months. Gregory of Cappadocia had died (probably of violence) in June, 345. The
embassy which had been sent by the bishops of Sardica to the Emperor
Constantius, and which had at first met with the most insulting treatment, now
received a favourable hearing. Constantius was induced to reconsider his
decision, owing to a threatening letter from his brother Constans and the
uncertain condition of affairs of the Persian border, and he accordingly made up
his mind to yield. But three separate letters were needed to overcome the
natural hesitation of Athanasius. He passed rapidly from Aquileia to Treves,
from Treves to Rome, and from Rome by the northern route to Adrianople and
Antioch, where he met Constantius. He was accorded a gracious interview by the
vacillating Emperor, and sent back to his see in triumph, where he began his
memorable ten years' reign, which lasted down to the third exile, that of 356.
These were full years in the life of the Bishop; but the intrigues of the
Eusebian, or Court, party were soon renewed. Pope Julius had died in the month
of April, 352, and Liberius had succeeded him as Sovereign Pontiff. For two
years Liberius had been favourable to the cause of Athanasius; but driven at
last into exile, he was induced to sign an ambiguous formula, from which the
great Nicene test, the homoöusion, had been studiously omitted. In 355 a council
was held at Milan, where in spite of the vigorous opposition of a handful of
loyal prelates among the Western bishops, a fourth condemnation of Athanasius
was announced to the world. With his friends scattered, the saintly Hosius in
exile, the Pope Liberius denounced as acquiescing in Arian formularies,
Athanasius could hardly hope to escape. On the night of 8 February, 356, while
engaged in services in the Church of St. Thomas, a band of armed men burst in to
secure his arrest (Apol. de Fuga, 24). It was the beginning of his third exile.
Through the influence of the Eusebian faction at Constantinople, an Arian
bishop, George of Cappadocia, was now appointed to rule the see of Alexandria.
Athanasius, after remaining some days in the neighbourhood of the city, finally
withdrew into the deserts of upper Egypt, where he remained for a period of six
years, living the life of the monks and devoting himself in his enforced leisure
to the composition of that group of writings of which we have the rest in the
"Apology to Constantius", the "Apology for his Flight", the "Letter to the
Monks", and the "History of the Arians". Legend has naturally been busy with
this period of the Saint's career; and we may find in the "Life of Pachomius" a
collection of tales brimful of incidents, and enlivened by the recital of
"deathless 'scapes in the breach." But by the close of the year 360 a change was
apparent in the complexion of the anti-Nicene party. The Arians no longer
presented an unbroken front to their orthodox opponents. The Emperor
Constantius, who had been the cause of so much trouble, died 4 November, 361,
and was succeeded by Julian. The proclamation of the new prince's accession was
the signal for a pagan outbreak against the still dominant Arian faction in
Alexandria. George, the usurping Bishop, was flung into prison and murdered amid
circumstances of great cruelty, 24 December (Hist. Aceph., VI). An obscure
presbyter of the name of Pistus was immediately chosen by the Arians to succeed
him, when fresh news arrived that filled the orthodox party with hope. An edict
had been put forth by Julian (Hist. Aceph., VIII) permitting the exiled bishops
of the "Galileans" to return to their "towns and provinces". Athanasius received
a summons from his own flock, and he accordingly re-entered his episcopal
capital 22 February, 362. With characteristic energy he set to work to
re-establish the somewhat shattered fortunes of the orthodox party and to purge
the theological atmosphere of uncertainty. To clear up the misunderstandings
that had arisen in the course of the previous years, an attempt was made to
determine still further the significance of the Nicene formularies. In the
meanwhile, Julian, who seems to have become suddenly jealous of the influence
that Athanasius was exercising at Alexandria, addressed an order to Ecdicius,
the Prefect of Egypt, peremptorily commanding the expulsion of the restored
primate, on the ground that he had never been included in the imperial act of
clemency. The edict was communicated to the bishop by Pythicodorus Trico, who,
though described in the "Chronicon Athanasianum" (xxxv) as a "philosopher",
seems to have behaved with brutal insolence. On 23 October the people gathered
about the proscribed bishop to protest against the emperor's decree; but the
saint urged them to submit, consoling them with the promise that his absence
would be of short duration. The prophecy was curiously fulfilled. Julian
terminated his brief career 26 June, 363; and Athanasius returned in secret to
Alexandria, where he soon received a document from the new emperor, Jovian,
reinstating him once more in his episcopal functions. His first act was to
convene a council which reaffirmed the terms of the Nicene Creed. Early in
September he set out for Antioch, bearing a synodal letter, in which the
pronouncements of this council had been embodied. At Antioch he had an interview
with the new emperor, who received him graciously and even asked him to prepare
an exposition of the orthodox faith. But in the following February Jovian died;
and in October, 364, Athanasius was once more an exile.
With the turn of circumstances that handed over to Valens the control of the
East this article has nothing to do; but the accession of the emperor gave a
fresh lease of life to the Arian party. He issued a decree banishing the bishops
who has been deposed by Constantius, but who had been permitted by Jovian to
return to their sees. The news created the greatest consternation in the city of
Alexandria itself, and the prefect, in order to prevent a serious outbreak, gave
public assurance that the very special case of Athanasius would be laid before
the emperor. But the saint seems to have divined what was preparing in secret
against him. He quietly withdrew from Alexandria, 5 October, and took up his
abode in a country house outside the city. It was during this period that he is
said to have spent four months in hiding in his father's tomb (Sozomen, Church
History VI.12; Socrates, Church History IV.12). Valens, who seems to have
sincerely dreaded the possible consequences of a popular outbreak, gave order
within a very few weeks for the return of Athanasius to his see. And now began
that last period of comparative repose which unexpectedly terminated his
strenuous and extraordinary career. He spent his remaining days,
characteristically enough, in re-emphasizing the view of the Incarnation which
had been defined at Nicaea and which has been substantially the faith of the
Christian Church from its earliest pronouncement in Scripture down to its last
utterance through the lips of Pius X in our own times. "Let what was confessed
by the Fathers of Nicaea prevail", he wrote to a philosopher friend and
correspondent in the closing years of his life (Epist. lxxi, ad Max.). That that
confession did at last prevail in the various Trinitarian formularies that
followed upon that of Nicaea was due, humanly speaking, more to his laborious
witness than to that of any other champion in the long teachers' roll of
Catholicism. By one of those inexplicable ironies that meet us everywhere in
human history, this man, who had endured exile so often, and risked life itself
in defence of what he believed to be the first and most essential truth of the
Catholic creed, died not by violence or in hiding, but peacefully in his own
bed, surrounded by his clergy and mourned by the faithful of the see he had
served so well. His feast in the Roman Calendar is kept on the anniversary of
his death.
[Note on his depiction in art: No accepted emblem has been assigned to him in
the history of western art; and his career, in spite of its picturesque
diversity and extraordinary wealth of detail, seems to have furnished little, if
any, material for distinctive illustration. Mrs. Jameson tells us that according
to the Greek formula, "he ought to be represented old, bald-headed, and with a
long white beard" (Sacred and Legendary Art, I, 339).]
Sources
All the essential materials for the Saint's biography are to be found in his
writings, especially in those written after the year 350, when the Apologia
contra Arianos was composed. Supplementary information will be found in ST.
EPIPHANIUS, Hoer., loc. cit.; in ST. GREGORY OF NAZIANZUS, Orat., xxi; also
RUFINUS, SOCRATES, SOZMEN, and THEODORET. The Historia Acephala, or Maffeian
Fragment (discovered by Maffei in 1738, and inserted by GALLANDI in Bibliotheca
Patrum, 1769), and the Chronicon Athanasianum, or Index to the Festal Letters,
give us data for the chronological problem. All the foregoing sources are
included in MIGNE, P.G. and P.L. The great PAPEBROCHI'S Life is in the Acta SS.,
May, I. The most important authorities in English are: NEWMAN, Arians of the
Fourth Century, and Saint Athanasius; BRIGHT, Dictionary of Christian Biography;
ROBERTSON, Life, in the Prolegomena to the Select Writings and Letters of Saint
Athanasius (re-edited in Library of the Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers, New
York, 1903); GWATKIN, Studies of Arianism (2d ed., Cambridge, 1900); MOHLER,
Athanasius der Grosse; HERGENROTHER and HEFELE.
About this page
APA citation. Clifford, C. (1907). St. Athanasius. In The Catholic Encyclopedia.
New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved November 3, 2022 from New Advent:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02035a.htm
MLA citation. Clifford, Cornelius. "St. Athanasius." The Catholic Encyclopedia.
Vol. 2. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. 3 Nov. 2022