Avilius of Alexandria

Avilius of Alexandria, known in Greek and Latin sources as Abilius or Abylius and in Coptic tradition under forms such as Milius and Melios, was the third bishop of Alexandria. Coptic Orthodox lists style him the third Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of Saint Mark, after the evangelist Mark and Anianus. No first-century document written by or about him has been preserved. The earliest historian to record his name is Eusebius of Caesarea in the Ecclesiastical History, who inserts Abilius between Anianus and Cerdon in the Alexandrian episcopal catalogue. Later Egyptian tradition, reflected in the Coptic Synaxarium and in medieval patriarchal histories, identifies him as a native of Alexandria who had been ordained to the priesthood by Saint Mark himself when Mark organized the city’s Christian community in the mid-first century.

According to Eusebius, Anianus died in the fourth year of Domitian, after which Abilius governed the church of Alexandria for thirteen years and was succeeded by Cerdon in the first year of Trajan (98). Coptic chronological tables, which diverge from Eusebius on several early dates, usually give Avilius a tenure from about 83 to 95. In either scheme he belongs to the closing decades of the first century. At that time the Alexandrian church was still a modest body within a predominantly pagan Greek city that also contained a large Jewish population. The distinctive later titles of pope and patriarch had not yet crystallized; they are applied to Avilius only retrospectively by Coptic and Byzantine writers. Nothing written by him survives, and no contemporary pagan or Jewish author mentions him.

Hagiographical accounts describe Avilius as a man of notable piety who continued the missionary work begun by Mark and Anianus, converting many Gentiles and strengthening the local clergy. These characterizations are conventional and cannot be confirmed from independent evidence. He is not presented as a martyr. Coptic tradition states that he died peacefully in Alexandria and was buried in the church at Bucalis (Baucalis), in the eastern district of the city, next to the remains of Saint Mark. That shrine remained the burial place of subsequent Alexandrian bishops for some generations. The Coptic Church keeps his feast on the first of Thout. Other Eastern calendars have occasionally grouped him with early Alexandrian hierarchs on different dates, but 1 Thout is the principal commemoration.

The limits of the evidence should be stated plainly. His year of birth is unrecorded. No reliable source names a spouse, children, or secular occupation. He belonged to no later religious order. Formal processes of beatification and canonization did not exist in the first centuries; his cult grew from local episcopal commemoration. Modern historians therefore treat Avilius as a historically attested late-first-century bishop of Alexandria whose personal biography, apart from the length of his episcopate and his place in the succession, remains almost entirely unknown. He is nonetheless an integral figure in the traditional list of Coptic popes and is venerated as a saint in the Coptic Orthodox Church.