Alexander of Jerusalem

Alexander of Jerusalem was a third-century Christian bishop and martyr whose life is known chiefly from the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius of Caesarea. Eusebius had access both to letters written by Alexander himself and to a theological library that Alexander assembled in Jerusalem. Alexander studied at Alexandria as a pupil of Clement of Alexandria and belonged to the same learned circle as Origen. After that formation he became bishop of a church in Cappadocia. During the persecution associated with the emperor Septimius Severus in the early third century, Alexander was arrested for his Christian confession and spent a number of years in prison.

Upon his release he went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The bishop of that church was then Narcissus, a man of extreme old age who had earlier withdrawn from his see and later returned. Eusebius reports that the faithful of Jerusalem, claiming to have been directed by a vision in a dream, insisted that Alexander remain among them as bishop together with Narcissus, and that neighboring bishops consented to this unusual arrangement of two bishops occupying the same see. Alexander thus served as coadjutor and, after Narcissus’s death, as sole bishop of Jerusalem. In that period Jerusalem (Aelia Capitolina) was still of lesser metropolitan rank than Caesarea, though it enjoyed unique prestige as the church of the holy city.

As bishop, Alexander was a notable patron of Christian learning. He founded a library at Jerusalem containing writings of earlier ecclesiastical authors; Eusebius later used this collection when composing his history. Alexander corresponded with Origen and, on at least one occasion, invited Origen—then still a layman—to preach before the church in Jerusalem, an action some regarded as irregular but which Alexander defended by pointing to similar custom elsewhere. Surviving notices of his letters include communication with the church of Antinoë in Egypt and correspondence touching Origen’s standing, in which Alexander spoke with esteem of Origen’s character and scholarship.

In the mid-third century the emperor Decius ordered a general persecution, requiring sacrifice to the Roman gods. Alexander, by then an old man, was arrested a second time and brought before the governor’s tribunal at Caesarea in Palestine. After a further public confession of faith he was imprisoned. Eusebius records that he died in that prison, worn out by his sufferings and by old age, during the Decian persecution, in 251. He is venerated as a saint and martyr in both Eastern and Western Christianity. The Latin tradition keeps his feast on 18 March; the Greek tradition commemorates him on 16 May and on 12 December. No reliable ancient source records his place of birth, family, or burial.