Athanasius

Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 296-373), bishop of Alexandria and the towering champion of Nicene orthodoxy in the fourth-century Arian controversy. A deacon present at the Council of Nicaea (325), he became patriarch in 328 and spent much of his episcopate defending the full divinity of Christ against Arianism, suffering five exiles under successive emperors-earning the epithet Athanasius contra mundum ("Athanasius against the world"). His writings, including On the Incarnation, the Life of Antony (which helped spread monasticism across the Latin West), and his annual Festal Letters, made him one of the most influential of the Greek Church Fathers; his 367 Festal Letter is the earliest surviving list of the 27 books of the New Testament canon.