The Early Episcopal Career of Athanasius of Alexandria (review)

St. Athanasius was consecrated as the 20th archbishop of Alexandria in A.D. 328. Seven years later he was condemned by the Council of Tyre and banished to Trier by the order of Emperor Constantine, in the first of a series of five exiles that totalled seventeen years. This book, which began as a Ph.D. thesis for the University of Durham, England, deals with the first seven years of the episcopate of Athanasius (328-335).

The book is divided into two large sections. Before embarking upon the historical narrative, the author tries in Section I to clear the character of Athanasius which has been under fierce attack from modern critics since 1896, when Otto Seeck charged him with forging the historical documents contained in his writings. Father Arnold starts by reviewing the enormous scholarly literature about the great Doctor of the Church during the last two centuries, in a trial to trace a historiographical line of succession within it. He compares the twentieth-century critics, mainly Edward Schwartz, E. Caspar, K. M. Setton, Hans-Georg Opitz and W. Schneemelcher, to the nineteenth-century biographers of Athanasius—Moehler (1844), Neule (1877), Newman (1881), Gwatkin (1882), and Robertson (1891), who all admired him and extolled his character and achievements. This historiography is concluded by a reference to the current authors who express a third, and more central stream of thought between those two opposing views.

The bulk of Section I details the issues in dispute at present as outlined by William Rusch (1974) and Frances Young (1983). Those deal with the content, the relative value and interpretation of three historical documents about Athanasius: The reports of the fifth-century church historian Philostorgius; the London Papyrus 1914, an Egyptian fourth-century letter which was edited and published by H. I. Bell in 1924; and the festival oration of Gregory Nazianzen in which he eulogized and defended Athanasius.

Since the passages referring to Athanasius which are still preserved from Philostorgius' church history dealt with his consecration on the throne of St. Mark in Alexandria, Arnold refers to all the available sources that described the event, including Socrates, Sozomen, Epiphanius, Gregory Nazianzen, the Apophthegmata Patrum, besides the Synodal Letter of the Egyptian Bishops of A.D. 338. Then he discusses the consecration practices in the Church of Alexandria, and the Melitian involvement in the Alexandrian election of 328, from which they were excluded by the Council of Nicaea. From all these traditional sources, and the modern scholarship commenting on them, Arnold concludes that Philostorgius' account was defective in the details and in the reporting of events and personalities, and just repeated Arian and Melitian calumnies against Athanasius at his trial to question the canonicity of his ordination.

The second issue in dispute is the reaction of Athanasius to the Melitians, especially as it relates to the London Papyrus 1914. In 328 Athanasius found himself in a Church rent by the schismatic Melitians and Coluthians from inside, and fiercely attacked by the heretic Arians and Manichaeans from outside. Athanasius was successful in stabilizing this situation, especially in relation to the Melitians who constituted the real danger to the Egyptian Church. Before departing for Tyre he had gained a majority of the Melitian bishops to his side and he was thus supported by the solid body of the Egyptian episcopate. This is a fact, which Arnold well documents, and he wonders how it can be reconciled with the allegation of the Athanasian opponents and critics that he was engaged in a brutal policy towards the Melitians. Arnold closely examines the London Papyrus 1914, and Bell's conclusions from it which have gained wide acceptance since 1924, and finds that it cannot be taken as a proof of Athanasius' use of violence. Nor can the festal oration of Gregory Nazianzen (Oration 21) be understood as a defense against the charges raised by the opponents of Athanasius. Arnold points to its literary style, as a panegyric written to...