St. Alexander of Alexandria

• One of the key figures at the Council of Nicaea (325) who succeeded Pope Achillas of Alexandria in 312.
• He is styled “the staunchest upholder of evangelical doctrine,” “the patron and protector of apostolic doctrine;” and “that bishop of divine faith, full of wisdom and of zeal enkindled by the Holy Spirit.”
• During his papacy the Arian controversy arose and the Meletian schism continued.
• He was the first to detect and condemn Arius, and taking his stand upon passages of Holy Scripture, he taught that the Son of God was of one and the same majesty with the Father, and had the same essence with the Father who begat Him.
• He first tried to win Arius and his adherents through kindness, but as they insisted to preach their heresy, a synod in Alexandria under the presidency of the pope

together with 100 bishops censured the false teaching, degraded Arius from the order of priesthood, and excommunicated him and his adherents.

• This proving ineffectual, the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea was convened, in which Arius and Meletius were condemned.
• He is said by tradition to have never read the Gospels in a sitting posture, and to have never eaten on fasting days while the sun was in the sky (Bolland. Act. SS., Feb. 26).
• In 328 the pope died after enduring many trials in combatingArianism.

1. Epistles

• St. Epiphanius states that a collection of 70 letters by Pope Alexander existed. All of them were lost except for two very important encyclicals concerned with the Arian controversy.
• In his Epistles on the Arian Heresy St. Alexander wrote: But that the Son of God was not made “from things which are not,” and that there was no “time when He was not,” the evangelist John sufficiently shows, when he thus writes concerning Him: “The Only-Begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father.” (Jn 1:18). For since that divine teacher intended to show that the Father and the Son are two things inseparable the one from the other, he spoke of Him as being in the bosom of the Father…John says, “All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made.” (Jn 1:1-3). For if all things were made by Him, how comes it

that He who gave to the things which are made their existence, at one time Himself was not. For the Word which makes is not to be defined as being of the same nature with the things which are made; since indeed He was in the beginning, and all things were made by Him and fashioned “from things which are not.” 30 2. Sermons

• Of his sermons one is preserved in a Syriac and a Coptic translation: De anima et corpore deque passione Domini. The introduction deals with the relation between soul and body; the main part with the necessity and the fruit of the Lord’s Passion. It is stronglyrhetorical in character.