E06565: Aldhelm, in his prose On Virginity, names *Athanasius (bishop of Alexandria, ob. 373, S00294), who was taught by *Alexandros (bishop of Alexandria, ob. 326/28, S00733), as an exemplary virgin. Written in Latin in southern Britain, for the nuns at the monastery at Barking (south-east Britain), c. 675/686.

Aldhelm, prose On Virginity, 32

Quid referam sanctae recordationis Athanasium, cuius rumigerula meritorum gloria et florigera pudicitiae praeconia quamquam specialiter apud Alexandriam et Aegiptum clarescerent, per totos tamen mundi cardines, ubi fides catholica fructi feris palmitibus frondescit, longe lateque percrebruit. Cuius altor et dogmatista beatus Alexander, Alexandriae pontifex, ab ipsa cunabulorum teneritudine extitisse memoratur, tam notariorum caracteres quam grammaticorum periodos colo et commate sequestratim distinctas affabiliter instruendo, qui videlicet Alexander, postquam ilia Arii scismatici in abstrusum latrinae cuniculum turpiter defluxerant, ecclesiae triumphali tropeo sublimatur [...]

[...] Igitur Athanasius post obitum Alexandri sumpto ecclesiae praesulatu quantas hereticorum machinas expertus sit, quot fraudulentas scismaticorum strofas pertulerit [...] aliud argumenti genus molientes comminiscuntur, ut prostituta pellax virum castissimum prostibuli stupro, quo penitus a pubertate incorrupto corpore caruit, insimulare procaciter machinaretur; quae cum universum a falsae garrulitatis incestum velut fetidam melancoliae nausiam de recessibus falsi pectoris evomuisset, statim per Timotheum presbiterum, quem nefandis ulnarum gremiis procax obuncabat, apologitica verborum veritate acsi fixa peltarum testudine defenditur. Verumtamen aemulorum vesaniae cedens, qui contra virum Dei zelantes rancida livoris invidia torquebantur, profugus longe proficiscens exulat adeo, ut sex annorum intercapidine n arida cisternae latebra delitescens nequaquam limpido solis radio potiretur, sed mens Deo dedita cote durior, ferro fortior, adamante rigidior omnes calamitatum insectationes, quas Clandistina lividorum conspiratio hostiliter irrogabat, inflexi cordis constantia aequanimiter perferebat.


'Why should I mention ATHANASIUS of blessed remembrance, the renowned glory of whose merits and flourish report of whose virginity, although particularly illustrious in Alexandria and Egypt, yet resounded far and wide through all the corners of the world where the catholic faith is putting forth fruit-bearing shoots? His tutor and instructor from the very tenderness of the cradle is said to have been the blessed Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, who taught him in a kindly manner the written characters which scribes use, as well as the periods of the grammarians, distinguished separately by cola and commata. This is the same Alexander who, after the bowels of Arius the heretic had flowed foully into the hidden hole of the latrine, is honoured with the triumphal trophy of the Church [...]

[...] Athansius took on the episcopacy of the church after the death of Alexander; and what great machinations by heretics he experienced, how many fraudulent plots by schismatics [...] they devise the building up of another kind of proof, so that a deceitful prostitute would impudently contrive to accuse the thoroughly chaste man of debauchery in a brothel – from which, his body uncorrupted from puberty onwards, he was completely free. When the prostitute had vomited up from the recesses of her false breast the entire lewdness of false verbosity, like the stinking vomit of biliousness, (Athanasius) is immediately defended by the priest Timothy – whom the insolent woman was clasping in the foul embrace of her arms – by a veracious verbal defence, as if by a fixed phalanx of shields. But Athanasius, giving in to the insanity of his rivals – who in their zeal against the man of God were twisted with the loathsome envy of spite – (and) setting out to wander far away exiles himself, so far that hiding in the dry hollow of a cistern for the space of six years, he in no way received a clear ray of the sun; but his mind dedicated to God – harder than a whetstone, stronger than iron, more rigid than adamantine steel – suffered impassively with the constancy of an unbending spirit all the calamitous persecutions which the clandestine conspiracy of envious people were malevolently bringing against him.'

Text: Ehwald 1919, 272-4. Translation: Lapidge and Herren 1979, 92-4.