Athanasius of Corinth
Our Venerable Father Athanasius, Bishop of Corinth
Venerable · Bishop · d. 10th–11th century (traditionally 937)
Commemorated 4 May — Peaceful repose of the bishop of Corinth
Athanasius, Bishop of Corinth, is a hierarch of the middle Byzantine period commemorated on May 4, of whom the synaxarion records only that he governed his church in piety and reposed in peace — no martyrdom, no controversy, no exile. He is styled hosios rather than merely hagios in the Greek notices, which marks him as a bishop of ascetic life. The one chronological datum transmitted is contradictory: he is said to have died "in the reign of Basil and Constantine," which points to the joint reign of Basil II and Constantine VIII (976–1025), while the year attached to the notice is 937. His memory is a good example of the great class of Byzantine hierarch-saints whose sanctity was local, undramatic, and preserved by the calendar alone.
The see of Corinth
Corinth in the tenth century was the metropolitan see of the Peloponnese and one of the oldest and most honourable churches of the Greek world — the church of the Apostle Paul's two epistles, of Clement's letter, and of a long line of bishops running back to the apostolic Sosthenes. It was also, in this period, a city of consequence: the administrative seat of the thema of Hellas, a centre of silk and of trade, and, after the Byzantine recovery of the Peloponnese from the Slavic settlements, the ecclesiastical head of a province being methodically re-Christianised. A bishop of Corinth in these years had the oversight of a considerable suffragan network and the standing to be remembered by the capital's calendars.
What is transmitted
The synaxarion's whole account of Athanasius is a single sentence with two elements. The first is that he lived in piety (ἐν εὐσεβείᾳ) — the formula the synaxarist uses for a bishop whose life was ascetic and whose pastorate was without scandal, and which the title hosios attached to his name corroborates: in Byzantine usage that word marks the monastic or monastically-living saint, and its application to a diocesan bishop implies that Athanasius was a monk before he was a hierarch and kept the monastic rule on the throne. The second is that he reposed in peace (ἐν εἰρήνῃ ἐτελειώθη) — the standard notation that he was neither martyred nor deposed nor driven out, and died among his own clergy.
The commemorative couplet appointed for him says no more than that praise is fitting to Athanasius, since he chose a virtue worthy of praise: it is a play on the name (athanasia, immortality) and a moral commonplace, and it carries no biographical information at all.
Nothing else survives: not his birthplace, not the monastery of his formation, not the length of his episcopate, not the name of a predecessor or successor, not a miracle, not a translation of relics. He is a bishop known to the Church because the Church's calendar remembered to keep him.
Feast and commemoration
May 4 (church date; New Calendar civil May 4, Old Calendar civil May 17). The commemoration is Greek: it stands in the Greek synaxaria among the day's venerable fathers, after Pelagia of Tarsus and the two Nikephoroi, and passes from them into the English lists (OrthodoxWiki gives "St Athanasios of Corinth, bishop, 10th–11th c."). He is not in the Slavic Menaion for the day and does not appear on the OCA or azbyka day-pages, whose May 4 is otherwise fully populated — a disparity of the same kind as with Hilary the Wonderworker on this date, and recorded here rather than resolved. In Corinth itself his name belongs to the local company of the city's holy bishops. No proper service is transmitted; the common of a hierarch is sung.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (from the common of a hierarch)
The truth of things hath revealed thee to thy flock as a rule of faith, an image of meekness and a teacher of abstinence; therefore hast thou attained the heights by humility, and riches by poverty. O Father and Hierarch Athanasius, intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Athanasius is painted in the full type of the Byzantine hierarch: bearded, usually grey or white, vested in phelonion (or, in later usage, sakkos) and the crossed omophorion, the right hand raised in blessing and the left holding the jewelled Gospel book against the breast. Because the Greek notices style him hosios, some painters give him the monastic koukoulion over the episcopal vesting, or show the analavos beneath, to mark the ascetic-bishop; this is the same convention used for the monk-patriarchs. He has no proper attribute and no narrative scene, and — as with all the undifferentiated hierarchs of the menologion rows — he is identified solely by the inscription Ο ΟΣΙΟΣ ΑΘΑΝΑΣΙΟΣ ΕΠΙΣΚΟΠΟΣ ΚΟΡΙΝΘΟΥ, the epithet of Corinth being indispensable given how many Athanasii the calendar carries.
No pre-1900 image of him has been identified for this collection. The search is made difficult by the overwhelming iconographic presence of Athanasius the Great, to whom almost every image inscribed simply "Ο ΑΓΙΟΣ ΑΘΑΝΑΣΙΟΣ" belongs.
Disputed questions
- The date is internally inconsistent. The Greek notice states that he reposed "in the reign of Basil and Constantine, in the year 937." The two halves do not agree. A joint reign of a Basil and a Constantine can only be that of Basil II and Constantine VIII (976–1025), which would place his repose in the late tenth or early eleventh century; the year 937 falls in the reign of Romanos I Lekapenos with the young Constantine VII, where there is a Constantine but no Basil as senior emperor. Three readings are possible: that the year is corrupt and the imperial reference sound (giving c. 976–1025); that the year is sound and the imperial reference has been supplied wrongly by a later hand (giving 937); or that a Byzantine dating by the year of the world has been mis-converted at some stage of transmission. OrthodoxWiki, evidently aware of the problem, resolves it by declining to choose and calling him simply "10th–11th century." This entry does the same, recording the traditional 937 in the died field as a tradition and indexing him under the tenth century as the earlier of the two candidate periods.
- Not among the datable bishops of Corinth. Athanasius is not securely placed in the episcopal fasti of Corinth, which are fragmentary for exactly these decades; he cannot therefore be dated by the list, and the list cannot be corrected by him.
- Not to be confused with the other hierarch-Athanasii of the calendar, and in particular not with Athanasius I of Constantinople (†1310, October 28), the ascetic patriarch, whose profile — a monk raised to a great Greek see, styled hosios, of the same general era — is close enough to invite the error; Athanasius the Great of Alexandria (†373, January 18 and May 2, the latter only two days from this feast); and Athanasius of Modon, also a bishop in the Peloponnese, whose see lay in the same province.