St Athanasius of Alexandria, Champion of Nicaea

St Athanasius (c. 297-373) was the bishop of Alexandria who, more than any other man of the fourth century, defended the true divinity of Jesus Christ against the heresy of Arius. Five times driven from his see, seventeen years in exile, he never yielded an inch of the faith confessed at the Council of Nicaea, and the Church honours him as a Doctor and keeps his feast on 2 May. Here is his life as the traditional sources tell it, his great book On the Incarnation, his best-known sayings, and the prayer of his feast.

Who was St Athanasius?

Athanasius was born at Alexandria in Egypt, probably about the year 297, of Christian parents. Of his family almost nothing is known except that he had a brother named Peter. A pleasant story kept by Rufinus tells how Bishop Alexander first noticed him "playing at church" with other boys on the beach, the child Athanasius gravely baptizing his companions; Butler doubts it, since Athanasius must already have been fifteen or sixteen when Alexander became bishop. What is certain is that he received an excellent education in Greek letters, philosophy, rhetoric, law and Christian doctrine, and that his knowledge of Holy Scripture was altogether exceptional. He learned his theology, he tells us, from teachers who had been confessors in the persecution under Maximian.

From his youth he was close to the hermits of the Egyptian desert, above all to the great St Antony. "I was his disciple," he wrote, "and like Eliseus I poured water on the hands of that other Elias." Those friendships with the monks were to save his life more than once.

In 318, at about twenty-one, he was ordained deacon and made secretary to Bishop Alexander. It was probably at this time, still a young man, that he wrote the treatise On the Incarnation.

Athanasius and the Arian crisis

About the year 323 a priest of Alexandria named Arius began teaching publicly that the Word of God is not eternal, that He was made in time by the Father, and that He could be called Son of God only in a figurative sense. Bishop Alexander laid the doctrine before his clergy and then before a council of Egyptian bishops, which condemned it and deposed Arius. The heresiarch withdrew to Caesarea, won the support of Eusebius of Nicomedia, and spread his teaching with remarkable skill: his doctrines were set to popular tunes and carried by sailors and traders along every shore of the Mediterranean.

In 325 the first General Council met at Nicaea. Athanasius was there as deacon and attendant of his bishop. He had no seat among the bishops, and it is unlikely that he spoke in their debates; but the Council formed him for the rest of his life. It confirmed the excommunication of Arius and set down the faith in the creed that confesses the Son "consubstantial with the Father," the faith we still sing in the Nicene Creed at Mass. Everything Athanasius later did, wrote and suffered was a defence of that one word and of what it guards: that Jesus Christ is true God, of one substance with the Father.

Shortly after the Council, Alexander died, having named Athanasius as his successor. He was elected bishop of Alexandria while not yet thirty, in 328.

The five exiles: "Athanasius against the world"

Almost from the first year of his episcopate, the Arian party and the schismatic Meletians of Egypt worked to bring him down. They accused him of taxing his people in linen, of sending gold to a traitor, of having a chalice broken, even of murdering a Meletian bishop named Arsenius, who was in fact alive and in hiding. He cleared himself of every charge, yet the attacks never stopped.

First exile (335-337). A council packed with his enemies met at Tyre and condemned him. Athanasius went straight to Constantinople and stopped the Emperor Constantine in the street to plead his cause. Constantine first took his side, then, for reasons never cleared up, changed his mind and banished him to Trier in Gaul. On Constantine's death in 337 he was restored.

Second exile (339-346). Eusebius of Nicomedia won over the Emperor Constantius, a council at Antioch deposed Athanasius again, and an intruder, Gregory of Cappadocia, was forced on Alexandria amid violence and sacrilege. Athanasius went to Rome. A synod under Pope St Julius I examined his case, the accusers failing to appear, and declared him innocent; the Council of Sardica confirmed the judgement. After eight years' absence he re-entered Alexandria amid scenes of unparalleled rejoicing.

Third exile (356-362). Once Constantius was master of the whole empire, he set out to crush the man he regarded as a personal enemy. Councils at Arles (353) and Milan (355) condemned Athanasius under imperial pressure. In Gaul, St Hilary of Poitiers was sent into exile in Phrygia for refusing to join in that condemnation. One night soldiers broke into the church where he was keeping vigil with his people; he escaped, he never knew how, and vanished into the desert, where the monks hid him for six years. Many of his chief writings come from those years of hiding. Of that time St Jerome wrote: "The whole world groaned and marvelled to find itself Arian." Hence the old phrase Athanasius contra mundum, "Athanasius against the world."

Fourth exile (362-363). Julian the Apostate, who wanted to restore paganism, could do little while the champion of the faith ruled Egypt. He banished him as "a disturber of the peace and an enemy of the gods," and called him contemptuously "that mannikin." Pursued up the Nile, Athanasius ordered his boatmen to turn round and row towards the imperial galley. "Have you seen Athanasius?" the soldiers shouted. "He is not far off," came the answer; "row fast if you want to overtake him." Julian died in Persia the following year.

Fifth exile (365-366). The Emperor Valens banished all the orthodox bishops once more. Athanasius hid for four months in a country house outside Alexandria, until Valens, fearing a rising of the Egyptians, revoked the order.

Five exiles, seventeen years away from his flock: then, for the last seven years of his life, he governed his Church in peace. It was probably in this last period that he wrote the Life of St Antony, the book that carried the ideal of monastic life to the whole West and that St Augustine heard of on the eve of his own conversion. It was in a cloak Athanasius had given him, St Jerome tells, that Antony buried St Paul the First Hermit in the desert.

How did St Athanasius die?

St Athanasius did not die a martyr. He died peacefully in his own city of Alexandria on 2 May 373, in about the forty-sixth year of his episcopate, surrounded by the people for whom he had suffered so much. His body was later translated to Constantinople, and afterwards to Venice. Cardinal Newman called him "a principal instrument, after the Apostles, by which the sacred truths of Christianity have been conveyed and secured to the world."

St Athanasius, On the Incarnation

On the Incarnation of the Word (De Incarnatione Verbi Dei) is the most read of all his works. It answers a simple question: why did God become man? Athanasius replies that man, made in the image of the Word, had fallen into corruption and death by sin; that no creature could restore what had been lost; and that only the Word by whom all things were made could renew His image in us and destroy death by dying. Near its close (chapter 54) comes the sentence for which it is famous:

"For He was made man that we might be made God."

He means, as the whole tradition after him, that by the Incarnation we are made sharers of the divine nature through grace, as St Peter says, not that we cease to be creatures. The same conviction drove his struggle against Arius: if the Son were only a creature, however exalted, He could not make us partakers of God. The Arian question was never for him a dispute of words; it was the question of our salvation.

St Athanasius quotes

A few sayings that show the man:

• On St Antony: "I was his disciple, and like Eliseus I poured water on the hands of that other Elias."
• On the Incarnation: "For He was made man that we might be made God."
• On Our Lord's agony, answering the Arians who argued from "Let this chalice pass from me" that the Word was afraid: "The Godhead was not in terror, but the Saviour took away our terror. For as He abolished death by death, and by human means all human evils, so by this so-called terror did He remove our terror, and brought about for us that never more should men fear death."
• On His divine power over His own life: "Man dies not at his own arbitrament, but by necessity of nature and against his will; but the Lord, being Himself immortal, had it at His own free will, as God, to become separate from the body and to take it again, when He would."

St Athanasius and the Athanasian Creed

The creed that begins Quicumque vult salvus esse, "Whosoever will be saved," bears his name, and in the traditional Breviary it is recited at Prime on the feast of the Most Holy Trinity. It is a magnificent summary of what he fought for: the Trinity of Persons in the unity of the Godhead, and the true divinity and true humanity of Christ.

Most scholars hold, however, that it was not written by Athanasius himself but composed in Latin in the West, probably in the fifth or sixth century, by an author steeped in his teaching. The Church has always used it as his creed because it is his faith. We give the full Latin and English text, with its history, in our article on the Athanasian Creed; the doctrine it unfolds is explained in our page on the Holy Trinity.

The prayer of the feast of St Athanasius

The Roman Missal of 1962 keeps his Mass on 2 May with the collect of a confessor bishop, which asks, through his merits, the forgiveness of our sins:

Collect of the feast, 2 May

Exaudi, quaesumus, Domine, preces nostras, quas in beati Athanasii Confessoris tui atque Pontificis solemnitate deferimus: et, qui tibi digne meruit famulari, eius intercedentibus meritis, ab omnibus nos absolve peccatis. Per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum Filium tuum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus, per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.

Hear, we beseech Thee, O Lord, the prayers which we offer Thee on the solemnity of blessed Athanasius, Thy Confessor and Bishop: and by the intercession of the merits of him who was found worthy to serve Thee, absolve us from all our sins. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.

The Gospel of the day is chosen for him: "When they shall persecute you in this city, flee into another" (Matthew x. 23). No text could fit better a bishop who fled five times and returned five times.

When is the feast of St Athanasius?

The feast of St Athanasius falls on 2 May, the day of his death in 373. In the traditional Roman calendar of 1962 it is a feast of the third class, with the Mass In medio Ecclesiae of the Doctors of the Church; you will find it in its place in our traditional Catholic calendar of 1962. The Eastern Churches honour him as well: the Byzantine calendar keeps him on 18 January together with St Cyril of Alexandria, and the Coptic Church, of which he is the most revered patriarch, holds his memory in the highest honour.

St Athanasius the Great: Doctor of the Church

The Greeks call him "the Great" and "the Father of Orthodoxy." In 1568 Pope St Pius V named him, with St Basil, St Gregory Nazianzen and St John Chrysostom, one of the four great Doctors of the Eastern Church, the counterpart of the four Latin Doctors, among them St Jerome. In Christian art he is shown as an aged bishop in Greek vestments, often with an open book, and in Eastern icons in the white omophorion marked with crosses. You will meet him among the great figures of our page on the Catholic saints.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is St Athanasius known for?

He is known above all as the defender of the divinity of Christ against Arianism. He held fast to the faith of the Council of Nicaea through five exiles under four emperors, wrote On the Incarnation and the Life of St Antony, and is honoured as a Doctor of the Church.

Was St Athanasius excommunicated?

He was condemned and deposed several times by councils packed with Arian bishops under imperial pressure, at Tyre, Antioch, Arles and Milan, but never by a free judgement of the Church. Pope St Julius I and a Roman synod declared him innocent, and the Council of Sardica confirmed it. The exiled Pope Liberius, broken by isolation, was for a time pressed into acquiescing in the censure, but the Church has always counted Athanasius as the champion of the faith and Liberius' weakness as extorted.

What did St Athanasius say about Arianism?

That it destroyed the faith at its root. If the Son were a creature, He could neither reveal the Father nor save us, for only God can make us sharers in God. Hence his refusal to receive Arius back into communion when the Emperor Constantine ordered it: the Catholic Church, he answered, could hold no communion with those who attacked the divinity of Christ.

When did St Athanasius live?

He was born about 297 at Alexandria and died there on 2 May 373. He was a deacon at the Council of Nicaea in 325 and bishop of Alexandria from 328 until his death, some forty-five years.

When was St Athanasius canonized?

He was never canonized by a formal process, which did not exist in his day. Like the other Fathers of the early Church he was venerated as a saint from his death by the acclamation of the faithful and the practice of the bishops; Pope St Pius V declared him a Doctor of the Church in 1568.

Was St Athanasius black?

He was an Egyptian, a native of Alexandria, and ancient writers describe him as small of stature, which is why Julian sneered at him as a "mannikin." No reliable ancient source describes his complexion in detail. What the Church has kept of him is his faith, not his features.

Was St Athanasius Catholic?

Yes. He was bishop of Alexandria, the second see of the Church, in communion with the Pope of Rome, to whom he appealed and by whom he was vindicated. He is equally venerated by the Eastern Orthodox and by the Copts, which is why so many Coptic and Orthodox churches bear his name.

How long did St Athanasius fight against Arianism?

All his life as a cleric: from the condemnation of Arius about 323 until his death in 373, half a century. Arianism was finally condemned again at the Council of Constantinople in 381, eight years after his death.

The Iter Fidei app carries the traditional calendar of 1962, the Roman Missal and the Breviary, and the creeds in Latin and English. Join early access here.

Sources. Alban Butler, Lives of the Saints, 2 May (St Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, Doctor of the Church). St Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word; Life of St Antony; Apologia contra Arianos. Roman Missal (1962), Proper of Saints, 2 May. Roman Breviary, feast of the Most Holy Trinity, Prime (Symbolum Quicumque). Holy Bible, Douay-Rheims version, Matthew x. 23. J. H. Newman, The Arians of the Fourth Century.