Athanasius of Alexandria

c. 296–373 · Greek Church (Alexandria) · Alexandria

Athanasius (c. 296–373), deacon at Nicaea and bishop of Alexandria from 328, was exiled five times for his defence of the Nicene faith against Arianism. Each year he addressed a Festal Letter to the churches of Egypt announcing the date of Easter and exhorting the faithful; the letters, recovered from a Syriac version in 1842, are pastoral addresses rather than private correspondence, and the thirty-ninth contains the earliest list of the New Testament canon in its present form.