The Arian party, as described by Athanasius, may not have existed in the form he portrayed in his writings.

While Athanasius may have affected the general perception of Arianism, they say, his portrayal was polemical, not creative.

However, some modern scholars have argued that the demons and temptations that Anthony is reported to have faced may have been related to Athanasius by some of the simpler pilgrims who had visited him, who may have been conveying what they had been told in a manner more dramatic than it had been conveyed to them.

In his " Introduction " to The Nag Hammadi Library in English, James Robinson suggests that these codices may have belonged to a nearby Pachomian monastery, and were buried after Bishop Athanasius condemned the use of non-canonical books in his Festal Letter of 367 AD.

This passage is entirely in irregular verse, and seems to be a direct quotation or a compilation of quotations ; it may have been written by someone other than Athanasius, perhaps even a person sympathetic to Arius.

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 ' name seems to have become attached to the creed as a sign of its strong declaration of Trinitarian faith.

St Athanasius seems to have been brought early in life under the immediate supervision of the ecclesiastical authorities of his native city.

Valens, who seems to have sincerely dreaded the possible consequences of a popular outbreak, gave orders within a few weeks for the return of Athanasius to his episcopal see.

Unfortunately, the emperor Constantius II seems to have been committed to having Athanasius deposed, and went so far as to send soldiers to arrest him.

Scholars have debated whether Athanasius ' list in 367 was the basis for the later lists.

Some argue that the view of Arianism that exists to this day among most Christians would not have existed were it not for Athanasius.

Successful recreations have been performed by Anthemius of Tralles ( 6th century AD ), Proclus ( 6th century ) ( who by this means purportedly destroyed the fleet of Vitellus besieging Constantinople ), Ibn Sahl in his On Burning Mirrors and Lenses ( 10th century ), Alhazen in his Book of Optics ( 1021 ), Roger Bacon ( 13th century ), Giambattista della Porta and his friends ( 16th century ), Athanasius Kircher and Gaspar Schott ( 17th century ), the Comte du Buffon in 1740 in Paris, Ioannis Sakas in the 1970s in Greece, and others.

Even if Athanasius and his companions were somewhat to blame, the letter runs, the Alexandrian Church should first have written to the pope.

He tries to have him arrested during a vigil service, but Athanasius flees to the Nitrian desert in Upper Egypt.

" Antonio de Lorea also argued for their existence, and Athanasius Kircher argued that compartments must have been built for them aboard Noah's Ark.

Scholars have speculated that the works were buried in response to a letter from Bishop Athanasius who for the first time declared a strict canon of Christian scripture.

It originally had 72 Byzantine and medieval churches, of which 54 have survived, including St Athanasius of Mouzaki.

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 .”

Sozomen appears also to have consulted the Historia Athanasii and also the works of Athanasius including the Vita Antonii.

Frumentius, on the other hand, eager for the conversion of Ethiopia, accompanied Edesius as far as Alexandria, where he requested Athanasius, Patriarch of Alexandria, to send a bishop and some priests to Ethiopia.

Another theory is that Zeno was a follower of Athanasius, patriarch of Alexandria, who accompanied his master when the latter visited Verona in 340.

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

Alexander determined to recognize the make-believe baptisms as genuine, and decided that Athanasius and his playfellows should go into training in order to prepare themselves for a clerical career.

" Not long after this ," adds the same authority, Bishop Alexander " invited Athanasius to be his commensal and secretary.

In about 319, when Athanasius was a deacon, a presbyter named Arius came into a direct conflict with Alexander of Alexandria.

On 9 May 328, Athanasius succeeded Alexander as bishop of Alexandria.

At the Alexandrian Council of 326, Athanasius was elected to succeed the aged Alexander, and various heresies and schisms of Egypt were denounced.

While Alexander had been priming Athanasius to assume the bishopric after his death, it is said, he was not unanimously supported, and questions of his age ( the minimum age to become a bishop was thirty, and questions remain to this day whether he was yet that old ).

There are assorted notices of his activities in the writings of his contemporaries Athanasius, Arius, Eusebius of Nicomedia, and Alexander of Alexandria.

* May 9 – Alexandria's patriarch Bishop Alexander dies and is succeeded by his deacon Athanasius.

When Bishop Alexander died in 327, Athanasius succeeded him, despite not meeting the age requirements for a hierarch.

Athanasius gathered together all the Coptic scribes, clergy, and bishops, and the group unanimously selected Alexander based on his sterling reputation.

One hundred years later, the Deacon Arius would compare Bishop Alexander to Sabellius, in effect accusing Alexander and Athanasius of reviving an old heresy.

At the First Synod of Tyre in AD 335, they brought accusations against Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, the primary opponent of Arius ; after this, Constantine had Athanasius banished, since he considered him an impediment to reconciliation.

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

Athanasius ' first problem lay with the Meletians, who had failed to abide by the terms of the decision made at the First Council of Nicaea which had hoped to reunite them with the Church.

Athanasius himself was accused of mistreating Arians and the followers of Meletius of Lycopolis, and had to answer those charges at a gathering of bishops in Tyre, the First Synod of Tyre, in 335.

When the day drew near of the departure of Saint Paul the First Hermit in the desert, Saint Anthony went to him and buried him, after clothing him in a tunic which was a present from St Athanasius the Apostolic, the 20th Patriarch of Alexandria.

He was able to dislodge and exile three key opponents who espoused the First Council of Nicaea: Eustathius of Antioch in 330, Athanasius of Alexandria in 335 and Marcellus of Ancyra in 336.

* First Listing of the New Testament ( Bible ) by St Athanasius of Alexandria.

* Pope Julius I gives refuge at Rome to the Alexandrian patriarch Athanasius, who is deposed and expelled during the First Synod of Tyre ( see 335 ).

* First Synod of Tyre: Constantine I convenes a gathering of bishops at Tyre to depose and exile Athanasius, the Patriarch of Alexandria.

Athanasius was exiled following his condemnation by the First Synod of Tyre in 335 ( though he was later recalled ), and the Synod of Jerusalem the following year restored Arius to communion.

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.

It occurs in the middle of that century in some Meletian documents cited by Athanasius, and then not till the First Council of Ephesus, 431.

The bishops at the First Synod of Tyre in 335 ( which also deposed Athanasius ) seem to have written to Constantine against Marcellus when he refused to communicate with Arius at Constantine's thirtieth-anniversary celebrations at Jerusalem.

Whether or not the so-called " fourth formula " is to be ascribed to a continuation of this synod or to a subsequent but distinct assembly of the same year, its aim is like that of the first three ; while repudiating certain Arian formulas it avoids the orthodox term " homoousios ," fiercely advocated by Athanasius and accepted by the First Council of Nicaea.