Amphilochius of Iconium

Amphilochius of Iconium was a Christian bishop and theologian of the fourth century, a Cappadocian by birth and a first cousin of Gregory of Nazianzus. He came from a distinguished Christian family; his father, likewise named Amphilochius, was a man of education and property. Precise details of his birthplace within Cappadocia and of the year of his birth are not preserved in the surviving sources. He received the rhetorical and legal training customary among the Greek-speaking elite of the eastern Roman provinces and for a period practiced as an advocate in Constantinople. In the later 360s he abandoned forensic life and withdrew to an ascetic retirement with his aged father, apparently on a family estate associated with the Cappadocian village of Ozizala. This withdrawal from civic career into a life of prayer and study resembles the path taken by several of his Cappadocian contemporaries before they were drawn into episcopal office.

Around 373, Basil of Caesarea, then metropolitan of Cappadocia, consecrated Amphilochius bishop of Iconium, the chief city of the neighboring province of Lycaonia. As metropolitan of Lycaonia he became a principal ally of Basil in the defense of Nicene orthodoxy against Arian and related teachings, and in the assertion of the full divinity of the Holy Spirit against the so-called Macedonians or Pneumatomachi. Basil’s surviving correspondence includes a number of letters addressed to Amphilochius on doctrine, liturgy, and canonical discipline, which show both personal friendship and reliance on him as a colleague. Amphilochius likewise remained in contact with Gregory of Nazianzus. He took part in the Council of Constantinople in 381, which reaffirmed the faith of Nicaea and whose doctrinal work on the Holy Spirit entered the creed later received by the churches.

Later ecclesiastical historians, notably Theodoret, recount that Amphilochius appeared at the court of Emperor Theodosius I and, by withholding from the emperor’s son Arcadius the same marks of honor he showed the emperor, sought to make vivid the inconsistency of those who honored the Father but refused equal honor to the Son. The anecdote, whatever its exact historical kernel, attests to his reputation as a Nicene controversialist. He is also associated with efforts to repress the Messalian or Euchite movement, an ascetic current accused of teaching that constant prayer alone was necessary and of depreciating the church’s sacraments and hierarchy; a synod at Side in Pamphylia, often linked with his name and placed in the last decades of the fourth century, dealt with this question. Jerome, in the catalogue of Christian writers he composed in the early 390s, still listed Amphilochius as living bishop of Iconium and as an author who had written on the Holy Spirit.

Only a fraction of his literary work survives, and the authenticity of some items is debated. The didactic poem known as the Iambics to Seleucus, which combines moral instruction with a list of books to be received as Scripture, is the work most commonly ascribed to him and is of importance for the history of the biblical canon. A synodal letter against Macedonian teaching and a small group of homilies are also attributed to him with varying confidence; other texts that circulated under his name are generally judged spurious. He vanishes from contemporary record after the early 390s and is thought to have died later in that decade. The place of his death and burial is not securely recorded, though his see was Iconium. He has been venerated as a saint in both the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, and his feast is kept on 23 November. He was never bishop of Rome nor the occupant of a patriarchal see; his historical importance lies in his role as a metropolitan of Lycaonia, a Cappadocian ally of Basil and Gregory, and a fourth-century witness to Nicene theology and to the defense of the divinity of the Holy Spirit.