ATHANASIUS (c. 298–373), bishop of Alexandria, theologian, church father, and saint. Athanasius was born around the year 300, perhaps in 298, according to a chronicle composed soon after his death and preserved in Syriac. Later Coptic legends locate Athanasius's birthplace in Upper Egypt, but these claims seem to contradict his genuinely Greek education. In his youth he may have visited Christian monks in the desert areas near Alexandria. The Alexandrian bishop Alexander (311–328) ordained him as a deacon at the time of the fateful dispute with Arius, and in the spring of 325 Athanasius accompanied the bishop to the imperial Council of Nicaea, where Arianism was solemnly condemned as a heresy. Elected by a small minority of the Egyptian clergy and by the Alexandrian laity as the successor of Alexander in the summer of 328, the young Athanasius, not yet in his thirties, faced a critical situation.

More than half of the many bishops...