It was from St. Alexander of Alexandria, Bishop of Alexandria, 312 – 328, himself an Origenist, that St Athanasius received his main instruction.

Julius, after expressing an opinion favourable to Athanasius, adroitly invited both parties to lay the case before a synod to be presided over by himself.

The orthodox Nicene party, notably Athanasius himself, held communion with Paulinus only ; twice, in 365 and 371 or 372, Meletius was exiled by decree of the Arian emperor Valens.

Athanasius of Alexandria was then in exile from Alexandria, Marcellus from Ancyra, and Asclepas from Gaza ; with them Paulus betook himself to Rome and consulted Pope Julius I, who examined their cases severally, found them all staunch to the creed of Nicaea, admitted them to communion, espoused their cause, and wrote strongly to the bishops of the East.

In 445 Ibas was summoned by Domnus to the synod held at Antioch in the matter of Athanasius of Perrha, but he excused himself by letter.

Of the handful of fragments of his defence treatise that have survived, he refers to the doctrine and “ heresies of the Nicolaitan ;... most of all hated and abhorred of God himself ... the common received faith contained in those three inventions of man, commonly called the Three Creeds ... the, Nicene and Athanasius Creed, which faith within these 1600 years past hath prevailed in the world .”

A graduate of the Greek College of St. Athanasius in Rome, he spent his career in Rome as teacher of Greek at the Greek college, and devoting himself to the study of classics and theology.

In the case of a presbyter named Athanasius, accused of being to some extent a Manichean, and condemned as such, Gregory tried to show that the accuser was himself a Pelagian, and that by the carelessness, ignorance, or fault of John IV, the Nestorian council of Ephesus had actually been mistaken for the Orthodox Council of Ephesus.

" Even disciples of Arius, such as George, Bishop of Laodicea ( 335-47 ) and Eustathius of Sebaste ( c. 356-80 ), joined the moderate party, and after the death of Eusebius of Nicomedia, the leaders of the count faction, Ursacius, Valens and Germinius, were not tied to any formula, for Emperor Constantius II himself hated Arianism, though he disliked Athanasius yet more.

Athanasius appointed Frumentius himself, who returned to Axum as Bishop with the name of Abune Selama.

The term “ Arian ” bestowed by Athanasius upon his opponents in the Christological debate was polemical.

Using his excellent knowledge of Greek, which was then rare in the West, to his advantage, he studied the Hebrew Bible and Greek authors like Philo, Origen, Athanasius, and Basil of Caesarea, with whom he was also exchanging letters.

Antipope Felix II was installed as Pope in 355 after the Emperor Constantius II banished the reigning Pope, Liberius, for refusing to subscribe the sentence of condemnation against Saint Athanasius.

Athanasius of Alexandria was traditionally thought to be the author of the Athanasian Creed, and gives his name to its common title.

This traditional attribution of the Creed to Athanasius was first called into question in 1642 by Dutch Protestant theologian G. J.

Voss, and it has since been widely accepted by modern scholars that the creed was not authored by Athanasius.

# The creed originally was most likely written in Latin, while Athanasius composed in Greek.

296-298 – d. 2 May 373 ), also referred to as St. Athanasius the Great, St. Athanasius I of Alexandria, St Athanasius the Confessor and ( primarily in the Coptic Orthodox Church ) St Athanasius the Apostolic, was the 20th bishop of Alexandria.

He was known as " Athanasius Contra Mundum ".

St Athanasius was born in the city of Alexandria or possibly the nearby Nile Delta town of Damanhur ca.

He sent for the children and, in the investigation that followed, it was discovered that one of the boys ( none other than Athanasius ) had acted the part of the bishop and in that character had actually baptized several of his companions in the course of their play.

At that meeting, Athanasius was accused of threatening to interfere with the supply of grains from Egypt, and, without any kind of formal trial, was exiled by Constantine to Trier in the Rhineland.

On the death of Emperor Constantine I, Athanasius was allowed to return to his See of Alexandria.

Athanasius went to Rome, where he was under the protection of Constans, the Emperor of the West.

During this time, Gregory of Cappadocia was installed as the Patriarch of Alexandria, usurping the absent Athanasius.

He called a synod in Rome in the year 341 to address the matter, and at that meeting Athanasius was found to be innocent of all the charges raised against him.

At this great gathering of prelates the case of Athanasius was taken up and once more his innocence reaffirmed.

The persecution against the orthodox party broke out with renewed vigor, and Constantius II was induced to prepare drastic measures against Athanasius and the priests who were devoted to him.

The author of the Festal Index, who was the original collector of St. Athanasius ' famed Festal Epistles ( collected shortly after his death ), stated that the Arians had accused St. Athanasius, among other accusations, that his ordination as Pope of Alexandria in 328 was not canonical because at the time of the consecration to the episcopate he had not yet attained the canonical age 30.

Pope Pius IX noted in Quartus Supra that Liberius was falsely accused by the Arians and he had refused to condemn St Athanasius.

Thus, he recalled the Jesuit Cardinal Bellarmin's sentences concerning the authority of religious councils concerning matters of dogma versus de facto issues ; he also recalled the debate between St Athanasius and St Basil concerning the interpretation of Dionysus of Alexandria, who was accused by Basil of Arianism and therefore convoked before the Pope Dionysius in 262 ; or the various contradictory papal interpretations given to the Scythian monks ; as well as another debate concerning Pope Honorius I, who had been later anathematized by the Third Council of Constantinople, although Cardinal Bellarmin defended Honorius ' orthodoxy, claiming that the condemned propositions were not to be found in Honorius.

During this period, he examined the case of bishop Athanasius of Alexandria, the important opponent of the Arianism, who was accused of murder.

Even in Athanasius ’ Orations against the Arians, Arius hardly emerges consistently as the creative individual originator of the heresy that bears his name, even though it would have greatly strengthened Athanasius ’ case to present him in that light.

* Athanasius of Alexandria, History of the Arians Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI Part VII Part VIII

In 325, at the age of 27, Athanasius had a leading role against the Arians in the First Council of Nicaea.

Shortly thereafter, Athanasius became occupied with the disputes with the Byzantine Empire and Arians which would occupy much of his life.

This was the start of a " golden decade " of peace and prosperity, during which time Athanasius assembled several documents relating to his exiles and returns from exile in the Apology Against the Arians.

Constantius, renewing his previous policies favoring the Arians, banished Athanasius from Alexandria once again.

During this period, Athanasius completed his work Four Orations against the Arians and defended his own recent conduct in the Apology to Constantius and Apology for His Flight.

Constantius ' persistence in his opposition to Athanasius, combined with reports Athanasius received about the persecution of non-Arians by the new Arian bishop George of Laodicea, prompted Athanasius to write his more emotional History of the Arians, in which he described Constantius as a precursor of the Antichrist.

Athanasius presented his opponents, the Arians, as a cohesive group that backed Arius ’ views and followed him as a leader.

He was sometimes referred to as the " Hammer of the Arians " ( Latin: Malleus Arianorum ) and the " Athanasius of the West.

The two available references from this work are recorded by his opponent Athanasius: the first is a report of Arius's teaching in Orations Against the Arians, 1: 5-6.

Alexandria became the centre of the first great split in the Christian world, between the Arians, named for the Alexandrian priest Arius, and their opponents, represented by Athanasius, who became Archbishop of Alexandria in 326 after the First Council of Nicaea rejected Arius's views.

After Constantine's death, the prestige given to the orthodox cause in the Arianist controversy by the support of the venerable Hosius led the Arians to bring pressure to bear upon Constantius II, who had him summoned to Milan where he declined to condemn Athanasius nor to extend communion to Arians.

Subjected to continual pressure from the Arians the old man, who was near his hundredth year, was weak enough to sign the formula adopted by the third Council of Sirmium in 357, which involved communion with the Arians but not the condemnation of Athanasius.

The most ancient reference to such a Roman church is in the Apology against the Arians of Athanasius, which speaks of a council of bishops assembled " in the place where the Presbyter Vito held his congregation ".

After the 325 Council of Nicea defeated Arianism, the greater number of the Eastern bishops, who agreed to the deposition of St. Athanasius at Tyre in 335 and received the Arians to communion at Jerusalem on their repentance, were not Arians.