Hierarch Athanasius the Great of Alexandria

Hierarch Athanasius was born around 297 in Alexandria. He received a brilliant theological education, served as deacon and secretary to Archbishop Alexander of Alexandria, whom he accompanied to the First Ecumenical (Nicene) Council of 325, where, still a young deacon, he emerged as a resolute defender of the teaching on the consubstantiality (homoousios) of God the Son with the Father against the heresy of Arius, who denied Christ's divinity. In 328 he was elected Archbishop of Alexandria. He devoted the rest of his life to the uncompromising defense of the Orthodox teaching affirmed in the Nicene Creed, for which he was subjected to constant persecution by the Arians and the emperors who favored them. He was exiled from his see five times, spending a total of about 17 years in exile, hiding, among other places, among the Egyptian desert monks. For his unbending firmness in confessing the truth, he received from posterity the name "Athanasius contra mundum" ("Athanasius against the world"). He wrote a number of crucially important dogmatic works in defense of Orthodoxy ("Against the Heathen," "On the Incarnation of the Word," epistles against the Arians), as well as the classic "Life of Venerable Anthony the Great," which became a model for the hagiographic genre and had an enormous influence on the formation of Christian monasticism throughout the world. He died in 373, having returned to his see. The Church honors his memory together with Hierarch Cyril of Alexandria on January 18/31, as well as May 2/15, the day of the translation of his relics.