The Five Exiles and the Councils

Athanasius was bishop of Alexandria from 328 until his death in 373, and in those forty-five years he was exiled five times — to Trier, to Rome, into the Egyptian desert, and twice more under the emperors Julian and Valens — spending roughly seventeen years away from his see. This file sets out the five exiles in chronological order, recounts the Council of Tyre and the Arsenius affair that triggered the first, and maps the council politics (Antioch, Sardica, the Sirmium formulae, Rimini–Seleucia) that kept him in and out of exile, including the famous verdict of Jerome on the Council of Rimini.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)

Overview

Athanasius succeeded Alexander as bishop of Alexandria in 328. From the start his enemies were a coalition: the Arians and “Eusebians” (the party of Eusebius of Nicomedia) who wanted Nicaea undone, and the Meletians, an Egyptian schismatic faction with their own grievances against the Alexandrian see. The charges that drove the first exile came largely from the Meletians; the theology that drove the later ones came from the imperial pressure to find a creed broader than the Nicene homoousios. The five exiles are conventionally numbered as follows (the documented dates for the major exiles are tabulated in the standard chronology at fourthcentury.com, following Barnes, Athanasius and Constantius).

First Exile: Trier (335–337)

The first exile grew out of the Council of Tyre (335). Athanasius’s enemies, marshalled by Eusebius of Nicomedia, summoned him to answer a battery of charges. He was accused of violence against the Meletians, of breaking into a church where a man named Ischyras was celebrating and overturning the altar and smashing the chalice, and — most sensationally — of having murdered a Meletian bishop named Arsenius, whose severed hand the accusers claimed to produce as evidence of magic (the charges are summarized in NPNF II/4 and in the account at the Catholic Encyclopedia).

The Arsenius affair. As the sources tell it, the charge collapsed theatrically. Athanasius’s agents had discovered that Arsenius was in fact alive and in hiding; Athanasius arranged for him to be present at the proceedings. When the accusers produced the “severed hand,” Athanasius brought forward the living Arsenius, cloaked, and revealed first that he was alive and then that he still had both his hands — demolishing the accusation (as recounted in the later church historians and summarized in NPNF II/4; the dramatic details, including the disguise, belong to the narrative tradition rather than to a contemporary trial record). Despite this, the hostile council deposed him, and the Emperor Constantine — partly on a further charge that Athanasius had threatened to interfere with the Alexandrian grain supply to Constantinople — sent him to Trier (Trèves) in Gaul. He remained there from 335 until Constantine’s death in 337, when his sons permitted the exiles to return.

Second Exile: Rome (339–346)

Restored only briefly, Athanasius was again driven out in 339 when his opponents installed a rival, Gregory of Cappadocia, in Alexandria. Athanasius fled west and spent this second exile largely in Rome (339–346), where he won the support of Pope Julius I, who received him into communion and championed his cause (the documented dates are April 339 – October 346; fourthcentury.com, following Barnes).

The great conciliar event of these years was the Council of Sardica (343), convened by the emperors Constans (West) and Constantius II (East) to settle the dispute. It failed: the Eastern and Western bishops could not even sit together, and the council split, the Westerners affirming Athanasius’s innocence and the Easterners withdrawing to hold their own counter-synod. Sardica thus hardened the East–West division rather than healing it. Athanasius was finally able to return in 346, after the death of Gregory, restored under an uneasy settlement backed by Constans.

Third Exile: The Desert (356–362)

After Constans died (350) and Constantius II became sole emperor, the pressure resumed. On the night of 8–9 February 356 imperial troops under the general Syrianus surrounded the church of Theonas during a vigil to seize Athanasius; he escaped and vanished into the Egyptian desert. This third exile (February 356 – February 362) was the longest and, paradoxically, the most productive: protected by the monks, Athanasius eluded capture while a Cappadocian intruder, George of Cappadocia, was installed as bishop in Alexandria (George was notoriously unpopular and was eventually lynched by an Alexandrian mob in 361). The works of these years, and the desert network that sheltered him, are the subject of The Desert Years.

It was during this exile that the imperial drive for a non-Nicene creed reached its climax. A succession of formulae was issued at Sirmium, the most notorious being the so-called “Blasphemy of Sirmium” of 357, which forbade the use of ousia language (and so both homoousios, “of the same essence,” and homoiousios, “of like essence”) altogether. The campaign culminated in the twin councils of Rimini (Ariminum) in the West and Seleucia in the East in 359, where, under sustained imperial pressure, the assembled bishops were brought to subscribe to a “homoian” formula stating only that the Son was “like” (homoios) the Father, dropping the language of essence.

It is this moment that Jerome had in view in his celebrated line. Writing later about the Council of Rimini, he said:

“The whole world groaned and marvelled to find itself Arian.” (Jerome, Dialogus contra Luciferianos 19; Latin: Ingemuit totus orbis, et Arianum se esse miratus est)

The sentence is Jerome’s verdict on Rimini specifically, not a free-floating proverb: it names the shock of the Western Church discovering that its own bishops had been maneuvered into a creed that omitted Nicaea’s homoousios. Athanasius himself, from his desert hiding, answered the council in his treatise De Synodis (On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia).

Fourth Exile: Under Julian (362–363)

Constantius died in 361, and Julian (“the Apostate”) at first recalled the exiled bishops — Athanasius returned and, in 362, held a council in Alexandria that worked to reconcile the divided pro-Nicene parties. But Julian, hostile to a bishop whose influence so plainly strengthened the Church, soon ordered him out again. This fourth exile was short (4 October 362 – early 364), spent once more partly in the desert and among the monks, and ended when Julian died on campaign in Persia (June 363) and his successor Jovian, a Nicene Christian, allowed Athanasius to return.

Fifth Exile: Under Valens (365–366)

The last exile came under the Arian-leaning emperor Valens, who in 365 ordered the expulsion of bishops who had been restored under Julian. Athanasius withdrew once more — by tradition spending some months in hiding, reportedly near his family’s tomb outside Alexandria — but the exile was brief (autumn 365 – early 366). Valens, wary of unrest in Egypt over so revered a figure, rescinded the order, and Athanasius returned to govern his see in relative peace for the seven years remaining until his death in 373.

The Council Landscape in Brief

The exiles only make sense against the council politics that produced them:

Tyre (335) — the hostile synod that deposed Athanasius and triggered the first exile, on the Meletian charges and the Arsenius affair.
Antioch (341) — the “Dedication Council,” which issued several creeds attempting to define a non-Nicene but anti-Arian middle position and confirmed Athanasius’s deposition.
Sardica (343) — the failed attempt at an East–West settlement; the council split along geographical lines, the West vindicating Athanasius, the East repudiating the meeting.
The Sirmium formulae (351, 357, 359) — a series of imperially backed creeds moving steadily away from Nicene language; the 357 formula (“Blasphemy of Sirmium”) banned ousia terminology.
Rimini and Seleucia (359) — the twin councils that produced the homoian “like the Father” formula; the high-water mark of the anti-Nicene cause and the occasion of Jerome’s “the whole world groaned” verdict.

Through all of it Athanasius held to the single conviction worked out in his earliest theology: that only a Son fully and truly God can save and deify, and therefore that no formula evading the homoousios could be accepted (see Theology of the Incarnation and Orations Against the Arians).

References

Athanasius of Alexandria. Apologia contra Arianos (Defence Against the Arians), Apologia ad Constantium, Historia Arianorum, and De Synodis [PG 25]. Translated in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 4 (NPNF II/4), ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, which also supplies the historical prolegomena to Athanasius’s life and exiles.
Jerome. Dialogus contra Luciferianos 19 (Ingemuit totus orbis, et Arianum se esse miratus est). Translated in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 6 (NPNF II/6).
Barnes, Timothy D. Athanasius and Constantius: Theology and Politics in the Constantinian Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. (Standard chronology of the exiles and councils.)
“Athanasius” chronological chart, Fourth Century Christianity (fourthcentury.com), Wisconsin Lutheran College — used to locate the documented exile dates (Western exile 16 April 339 – 21 October 346; desert exile February 356 – 21 February 362; exile under Julian 4 October 362 – 14 February 364); chronology cross-checked against Barnes.
Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), s.v. “St. Athanasius” — used to locate the narrative of the Council of Tyre and the Arsenius affair; primary detail traced to NPNF II/4.