The life of St Serapion the Venerable
He was remembered as a friend and correspondent of Athanasius of Alexandria, who wrote to him at length, including four letters on the Holy Spirit that stand among the earliest formal Christian writing on that subject, and Serapion's own reputation for learning and firmness in the faith made him one of Athanasius's most trusted allies among the Egyptian bishops.
When Arian pressure overtook the Alexandrian church, Serapion was driven from his see in 350 by George, the Arian who had seized the patriarchal throne there, and he passed into exile from which no certain later record of him survives. A collection of liturgical prayers bearing his name, lost for centuries, came back to light only at the end of the nineteenth century and is still studied for what it shows of how the fourth-century Egyptian church prayed. Later tradition preserved of him is thin, and some popular accounts have folded into his memory the story of a different Egyptian ascetic of the same name; this Life keeps to what belongs to the bishop of Thmuis alone.
