Saint Athanasius, Bishop and Doctor of the Church

Athanasius was born about 296 and, as a young deacon, went with his bishop Alexander to the Council of Nicaea in 325, which declared the Son to be “of one being with the Father” against the teaching of Arius. In 328 he became bishop of Alexandria. For the rest of his life he defended that creed, against the Arian party and against several emperors who supported it.

He was driven from his see five times and spent some seventeen years in exile, once hiding in the desert among the monks. He wrote the Life of Anthony, which spread the ideal of monastic life to the West, and in his Easter letter of 367 listed the twenty-seven books of the New Testament as we have them today. He died in Alexandria on 2 May 373.