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Biography

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Achillas (Greek: Ἀχιλλᾶς), also called Achillas of Alexandria or Achillas the Great, was a priest, teacher, and short-lived bishop of the early fourth century who became the eighteenth Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria. He belonged to the church of Alexandria in Roman Egypt during the closing years of the Diocletianic persecution and the first years of the Constantinian settlement. Ancient notices, including those preserved by Eusebius of Caesarea and later ecclesiastical historians, present him as a man of unusual learning, trained in Greek letters and philosophy as well as in Christian doctrine. Before his elevation he served as a presbyter of the Alexandrian church and was placed in charge of the celebrated Catechetical School of Alexandria, the institution associated with earlier teachers such as Pantaenus, Clement, and Origen. Coptic tradition likewise remembers him as a priest of Alexandria, righteous and filled with the Holy Spirit, who taught in the theological school after Pierius.

He succeeded Saint Peter I of Alexandria, commonly called Peter the Seal of the Martyrs, after Peter’s execution in 311. The episcopate of Achillas was brief. Surviving patriarchal lists and later historians generally assign him a tenure of only some months, commonly placed in 311–312 or 312–313, ending with his death in 313. In that short interval he had to restore church life in a community that had been shattered by persecution, disputed ordinations, and the lingering effects of the Meletian schism in Egypt. Contemporary and near-contemporary writers praise his piety, conversation, and manner of life; the Roman Martyrology later singled out his erudition and faith. He was followed on the throne of Alexandria by Alexander, under whom the Arian controversy would erupt into an empire-wide crisis.

The episode for which Achillas is most often remembered is his dealing with Arius. Peter of Alexandria had excommunicated Arius. After Peter’s death, Achillas, described by later historians as milder in temperament, received Arius back into communion and ordained him priest, entrusting him with the church of Baucalis in Alexandria. The restoration is reported by Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen, Theodoret, and Epiphanius, and it became a standard element in accounts of the origins of Arianism. Whether Achillas was deceived by a show of repentance, as some later writers claimed, or simply sought to heal a local rift, cannot be established from the earliest sources. Coptic narrative tradition treats the act as a grave error that bore bitter fruit under Alexander and Athanasius. Nothing in the surviving evidence shows that Achillas himself taught the doctrines later condemned at Nicaea; the charge against him is pastoral misjudgment rather than heresy.

Achillas died in Alexandria in 313 after a patriarchate of only about half a year to a year, and he was venerated as a saint from an early date, without a later formal process of canonization. His cult is ancient in Egypt and was received in both Eastern and Western calendars. The Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates him on 19 June; the Roman Martyrology lists him on 7 November; the Coptic Orthodox Church keeps his feast on 19 Paoni. No reliable ancient source records his year or place of birth, his family, or a precise burial site, and nothing documents a spouse or children. What can be said with confidence is that he stood at a hinge of Alexandrian history: last head of the catechetical tradition before the Arian storm, brief successor of a martyr-pope, and the bishop whose reconciliation of Arius helped set the stage for the greatest doctrinal conflict of the fourth century.

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