The patriarch exiled five times for insisting Christ equals the Father
Athanasius of Alexandria, born around 296–298, served 45 years as patriarch from 328 to 373 despite spending 17 years in exile. At 27 he helped shape the Nicene Creed against Arius. Emperors Constantine, Constantius, Julian, and Valens all tried to remove him.
Bishop Alexander discovered the young Athanasius playing baptism on the Alexandria seashore and invited him into clerical training. Ordained deacon in 319, Athanasius attended Nicaea in 325 as Alexander's secretary. When Alexander died five months after the council, the people demanded Athanasius as successor; he was consecrated around 326 at about age thirty.
Athanasius refused to readmit Arius from exile in 328 and clashed with Meletian factions. Supporters of Arius deposed him at Tyre in 335; Constantine exiled him to Trier in Gaul. Over his episcopate he fled Alexandria roughly six more times when enemies sought his life. Maximin of Trier received him honorably during his first exile.
His writings include On the Incarnation and a biography of Anthony the Great. He is venerated as Father of Orthodoxy and one of four Great Greek Church Fathers alongside Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, and John Chrysostom. The term homoousios in the Nicene Creed was not his invention, though he defended it fiercely against Arian subordinationism for decades. At Nicaea the word consubstantial went into a statement of faith drafted by Hosius of Córdoba, and it stayed the yardstick of orthodoxy until the Arian quarrels died down. Athanasius wrote in Greek and admitted he knew no Hebrew, so his Old Testament quotations mostly follow the Septuagint. His earliest treatise, Against the Heathen paired with On the Incarnation, predates 319 and carries traces of Origen's Alexandrian thought. One likely teacher was Peter of Alexandria, martyred in 311 as the Great Persecution closed.
Source: Athanasius of Alexandria
