Serapion of Thmuis

Serapion of Thmuis, also known as Serapion the Scholastic, was a Christian monk, bishop, and theological writer of fourth-century Egypt. Almost nothing can be established about his family, the year or place of his birth, or his education before he entered the desert. He became a monk in the Egyptian wilderness and a close disciple of Anthony the Great. Jerome, writing later in the same century, describes him as Antony’s intimate friend and notes that he was called Scholasticus because of his cultivated mind. The Life of Antony records that at the end of his life Anthony directed that one of his two sheepskin cloaks be given to Bishop Serapion and the other to Athanasius of Alexandria, a sign of the spiritual bond between the hermit and the two bishops.

Serapion was appointed bishop of Thmuis, a city in the Nile Delta of Lower Egypt (near present-day Tell el-Timai), and he already held that office by the time of the Council of Sardica in 343, where he stood with the supporters of the Nicene definition. He remained a loyal ally of Athanasius of Alexandria throughout the Arian controversies. In the later 350s Athanasius addressed to him a series of letters on the Holy Spirit, written against Christians who accepted the divinity of the Son but denied that of the Spirit; those letters are among the most important fourth-century treatments of pneumatology. When the emperor Constantius II backed an Arianizing policy in Egypt, Serapion was deposed and sent into exile, probably near the end of the 350s, together with other Nicene bishops.

As an author Serapion composed a treatise Against the Manichaeans, which survives and attacks the dualist cosmology of that sect, as well as a lost work on the titles of the Psalms and various letters, according to Jerome’s catalogue of Christian writers. A collection of about thirty liturgical prayers, known as the Sacramentary or Euchologion of Serapion, is preserved in a medieval Greek manuscript from Mount Athos and is commonly ascribed to him or to his church; it is a major source for the baptismal, eucharistic, and ordination rites of fourth-century Egypt. These texts present him as a pastor engaged in doctrine, liturgy, and the refutation of heresy rather than as a speculative philosopher.

The precise date and place of Serapion’s death are unknown. Jerome reports that he was banished in the reign of Constantius and thereafter died, which situates his death in the middle of the fourth century, during or shortly after his exile. He has been venerated as a saint in Eastern and Western calendars, with a feast on 21 March. Later Coptic, Orthodox, and Catholic tradition remembers him as a holy bishop, a disciple of Anthony, and a defender of Nicene orthodoxy. Beyond the testimony of Athanasius, Jerome, the Life of Antony, and the writings associated with his name, the details of his life remain sparse, as is typical for many Egyptian churchmen of his age.