393 



ATHANASIUS, ST. 



ATHELSTAN. 



394 



ATHANA'SIUS, ST., archbishop of Alexandria, was born at Alex- 

 andria, at the close of the 3rd century ; and was first the pupil, and 

 afterwards the secretary, of the Archbishop Alexander. In 325 he 

 attended his patron to the council of Nice ; and there he acquired, by 

 his controversial acuteness and zeal, so general a reputation, that 

 Alexander did not hesitate to recommend him, notwithstanding his 

 youth, as his own successor in the see of Alexandria, and on the 

 death of that prelate iu the following year he was duly elected by the 

 clergy and people ; and the act was confirmed without any opposition 

 by the hundred bishops of Egypt. When Arms was recalled from 

 exile, probably in 327, Athanasius, though scarcely installed in his 

 dignity, refused (as some say) to comply with the will or wish of the 

 Emperor Coostantine, that the heretic should be restored to com- 

 munion. This strife, which had commenced at Nice, Athanasius con- 

 tinued to prosecute on every occasion, and by every means in his 

 power, till the end of his days. But his enemies were powerful in 

 Syria and Asia Minor. Several serious charges were alleged against 

 him, and he was summoned before a numerous council assembled at 

 Tyre in 334. He appeared, and was condemned; and Constantino 

 exiled him to Gaul. This was his first persecution ; but it ended, in 

 about two years, with the life of the emperor. Athanasius returned ; 

 but, as the decision of Tyre was yet unrepealed, and as Constantius, 

 who after a short interval succeeded to the Eastern empire, was 

 opposed to the Nicene faith, a council of ninety Arian bishops 

 assembled at Antioch in 341, and confirmed the sentence of deposition. 

 The civil authority then again interposed, and the archbishop was 

 once more sent into banishment. His refuge on this occasion was 

 Italy ; but there he found zealous supporters among the body of the 

 clergy, among the leading prelates, and in the orthodox Emperor 

 Coijstans. His doctrine was asserted in 347 by the council of Sardica; 

 and Constaas was preparing to reinstate him by arms, when the 

 Emperor of the East relented, and recalled him to his see in 349. 

 The people of Alexandria, whose fidelity had never been shaken, 

 received him with triumphant exultation. His authority was con- 

 firmed, and his reputation was everywhere diffused, to the most 

 remote extremities of the Christian world. But when Constantius, 

 at his brother's death, acquired the ereater portion of the Western 

 empire, he once more directed the whole weight of his power against 

 Athiinasius. Yet he ventured not even then to proceed by the exer- 

 cise of authority to his object : he temporised. He went iu person 

 into the west; he summoned councils, first at Aries, then at Milan, 

 nud endeavoured to procure some act of ecclesiastical condemnation 

 against his subject. By much importunity, and means the most un- 

 worthy, he succeeded ; and Athanasius was denounced in 355, in that 

 city which, only twenty years afterwards, glorified in its spiritual sub- 

 jection to the orthodox rule of Ambrose. When the sentence was 

 enforced, some tumults arose at Alexandria, and blood was shed : but 

 the prelate, perceiving the inequality of the contest, withdrew from 

 his capital (for the third time), and concealed himself in the deserts 

 of Upper Egypt. There, through the fidelity of the monastic disci- 

 ples of St. Antony and the reverence, almost superstitious, which he 

 seems to have inspired, he continued for six years to elude the impe- 

 rial officers, and employed his enforced leisure in composing some of 

 his principal writings ; and it would seem from his own statements 

 that he was present at the synods of Seleucia and Rimini. On the 

 death of Constantius in 361, he returned to his see; and though as 

 the great adversary, not then of Arianism, but of Paganism, he was 

 for a while again driven from his charge by Julian, and was like- 

 wise compelled, by the violence of Valens, to seek safety for a few 

 months, as is said, in his father's tomb (and these are sometimes called 

 his fourth and fifth persecutions), he retained his dignity in com- 

 parative repose to the end of his long life, in 373. 



Athanasius was unquestionably the brightest ornament of the early 

 church. And his prudence was not the least remarkable of his 

 characteristics. With tho most daring courage, and an unwearied 

 devotion to his cause, and perseverance in his purpose, he combined 

 a discreet flexibility, which allowed him to retire from the field when 

 it couM be no longer maintained with success ; and to wait for new 

 contingencies, and prepare himself for fresh exertions. If he did not 

 passionately seek the crown of martyrdom, it was not that he loved 

 life for itself, but for the services which its continuance might still 

 enable him to render to the church. He was no less calm and con- 

 siderate than determined ; and while ho shunned useless danger (see 

 his 'Apology for his Flight'), he never admitted the slightest com- 

 promise of his doctrine, nor ever attempted to conciliate by any con- 

 cession even his imperial adversaries. And it should not be forgotten 

 that the opinion for which he suffered eventually prevailed, and has 

 been professed by the great majority of Christians from that day to 

 this. " In his life and conduct," says Gregory Nazianzenus, " he ex- 

 hibited the model of Episcopal government in his doctrine, the rule 

 of orthodoxy." Again, the independent courage with which he re- 

 sisted the will of successive emperors for forty-six years of alternate 

 <li;rnity and misfortune, introduced a new feature into the history of 

 Kome. An obstacle was at once raised against imperial tyranny : a 

 limit was discovered which it could not pass over. Here was a 

 refractory subject, who could not be denounced as a rebel, nor 

 destroyed by the naked exercise of arbitrary power; the weight of 

 spiritual influence, in the skilful hand of Athanasius, was beginning 



to balance and mitigate the temporal despotism ; and the artifices to 

 which Constantius was compelled to resort, in order to gain a verdict 

 from the councils of Aries and Milan, proved that his absolute power 

 had already ceased to" exist. Athanasius did not, indeed, like the 

 Gregories, establish a system of ecclesiastical policy and power that 

 belonged to later ages, and to another climate but he exerted more 

 extensive personal influence over his own age, for the advancement of 

 the Catholic church, than any individual member of that church has 

 ever exerted in any age, except perhaps St. Bernard. " In all his 

 writings (says Photius) he is clear in expression, concise and simple ; 

 acute, profound, and very vehement in his disputations, with won- 

 derful fertility of invention ; and in his method of reasoning he treats 

 no subject with baldness or puerility, but all philosophically and mag- 

 nificently. He is strongly armed with Scriptural testimonies and 

 proofs, which is chiefly apparent in his discourse against the Greeks, 

 in that on the ' Incarnation,' and in his ' Five Books against Arius,' 

 which arc indeed a trophy of victory over heresy, but chiefly over the 

 Arian." Others of his numerous works throw much light ou the 

 history of his times, such as his ' Disputation with Arius in the Council 

 of Nice;' his ' Narrative, concerning the same Council ;' his 'Epistle 

 to Serapio on the Death of Arius ; ' his ' Epistle on the Synods of 

 Rimini and Seleucia,' and others. There are also Catholic epistles 

 and sermons; a long 'Letter to the Solitaries,' and a 'Life of St. 

 Antony,' the founder of their institutions ; as well as controversial 

 writings against Meletius, Paul of Samosatu, and Apollinarius; 'On 

 the Divinity of the Holy Spirit ; ' and ' Against every Denomination 

 of Heresy.' The earliest edition of any part of his works appeared at 

 Vicenza in 1482, and ia Latin only; the whoU 1 , according to Hoffman, 

 were published at Paris in 1519, also in Latin : they were next pub- 

 lished in Greek, with the translation of Nannius, at Heidelberg, in 

 1601. The 'Four Orations against the Arians" were Eoglishod by 

 Samuel Parker, 2 vols. 8vo, Oxford, 1713. Translations of the Epistles 

 in defence of the Nicene definition, and some other of his shorter 

 writings, published by the Rev. J. H. Newman, Oxford, 1842, &c. 

 The two Creels, called the Nicene and the Athanasiau, have been 

 vulgarly considered as being, in part at least, if not entirely, the pro- 

 ductions of Athanasius. Iu respect to the former, there can bo no 

 doubt that it was composed as far as the words " I believe iu the 

 Holy Gbost," for what follows is of a later date by the direction of 

 the Council of Nice and probably by members of tliat Council ; and 

 therefore Athanasius, as oue of those members, may have assisted iu 

 the composition. But there is no ground to believe that the work 

 was peculiarly his own. In regard to the Creed called by the name 

 of Athanasius, all reasonable writers now agree that it appeared in a 

 later age than his, in the Western Church, and in the Latin language. 

 It contains definitions of faith, which are obviously borrowed from the 

 decisions of councils posterior to the death of Athanasius. And 

 respectable writers, as Vossius, Quesnel, and others, have ascribed it, 

 with no great improbability, to one Vigilius Tapsensis, also an African 

 bishop, who lived at the eud of the 5th century. A complete list of 

 the works of Athanasius, including tho doubtful and supposititious 

 as well as the genuine, is given in Fabricius, ' Bibl. Grace.,' ed. Hales, 

 vol. viii., 184-215 ; Socrates, ' Hist. Eccles.,' 1. i. c. 8, 9, 23 ; 1. iii. c. 4, 

 et. seq. ; Sozomen, ' Hist. Eccles.,' 1. ii. c. 17, 25, 30 ; 1. iii. c. 2, 6 ; 

 Theodoret, ' Hist. Eccles.,' 1. i. c. 25, et seq. ; 1. ii. c. 6, 9, et seq. ; Philo- 

 storgius, 1. i. ii. iii. ; Sulpicius Severus, 'Historia Sacra,' 1. ii. ; Grago- 

 rius Nazianzenus, ' Orat.,' 3, xxi. ; Photius, ' Bibliotheca,' p. 1430, 

 edit. Genev., and fragment in the Preface to the Paris edition (1627) 

 of the ' Works' of Athanasius; Tillemont, 'Mdmoires Eccles.' torn. viii. 



(Biographical Dictionary of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful 

 Knowledge.) 



ATHANASIUS, the rhetorican, bishop of Constantinople, wrote a 

 work entitled ' Aristotelis Propriam de Auimac Immortalitate Meutum 

 Explicans,' Gr. et Lat. 2 libris; Paris, 1641, 4to : and also 'Antepatel- 

 larus, seu de Primatu S. Petri ; Epistola de Uuione Ecelesiarum ad 

 Alexandrine et Hierosolymorum Patriarchas ; item Auticampanella, in 

 compei-dium redactus,' Gr. et Lat., Paris, 1655, 4to. He died at Paris 

 in 1663, in his 92nd year. 



ATHELSTAN, one of the most illustrious of the Anglo-Saxon 

 sovereigns of England, was the eldest son and successor of Edward 

 the Elder, and the grandson of Alfred the Great. He was the first 

 who called himself king of the English ; his father and grandfather 

 having been content to call themselves kings of the Anglo Saxons, 

 whilst Egbert and the sovereigns between him and Alfred, were only 

 styled kings of Wessex. Athelstan was born about 895, six years 

 before tho death of Alfred. His mother appears to have been a per- 

 son of lowly birth, the daughter of a Saxon husbandman. 



Edward, the only son of Edward the Elder who had arrived at 

 years of maturity except Athelstan, died a few days after his father. 

 Atholstan was nominated iu his father's will as liia successor, and the 

 voice of the people and the vote of the Witteuagemote having sanc- 

 tioned Edward's nomination, Athelstan was crowned at Kingston- 

 upon-Thames in 925. But his election had not been unopposed, and 

 he had to defend his right to the throne against a party who espoused 

 the cause of some of the younger children of King Edward. Edwin, 

 one of his brothers, was lost in the English seas somewhere about 

 933, and the memory of Athelstau is, by some of our early historians, 

 charged with his murder Edwin having, it is alleged, been driven 



