The first exile
Athanasius exiled by Constantine
Ten years after Nicaea, the political winds have shifted completely against Athanasius. He is now bishop of Alexandria — the most important see in the eastern empire — and he is surrounded by enemies.
The charges brought against him at the Council of Tyre in 335 AD are not theological. His opponents know better than to relitigate Nicaea directly. Instead: he illegally levied a tax of linen vestments on Egypt. He broke a chalice used in the Eucharist. He had a man's hand cut off for use in magical rituals. He had a man murdered.
All of it fabricated. The murder victim walks into the council chamber alive. The man who supposedly lost his hand shows both hands to the assembly. Athanasius's supporters demonstrate each charge is false.
But the council is stacked against him and the verdict is predetermined. Constantine, convinced by Arian advisors that Athanasius is the obstacle to church unity, exiles him to Trier — the westernmost point of the empire, nearly as far from Alexandria as it is possible to go.
Athanasius arrives in Trier and does what he will do in every exile: he keeps working. He writes. He corresponds. He forms relationships with the Western bishops who will become his allies.
This is the first of five exiles. He will spend seventeen of the next forty-five years outside his own see.
He outlasts Constantine. He returns to Alexandria when the emperor dies in 337 AD. Within two years he is exiled again.
“Even if the whole world should be against me, I am not afraid.”
— Athanasius of Alexandria, c. 4th century
“The LORD is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The LORD is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid?”
Athanasius was exiled on fabricated charges by a council whose verdict was decided before the evidence was heard. This is not a unique experience in church history — it is a recurring one.
What sustained him through five exiles over forty-five years was not invulnerability to the injustice. He felt it. He wrote about it. What sustained him was the conviction that the thing he was defending was true regardless of what any council decided, and that truth does not expire.
He was not rooted in his position. He was rooted in the thing his position was about.
What are you defending that would still be worth defending if every institutional support for it were removed?