self in this profession at
Constantinople, but excused himself from settling there, as the city and
the emperor Constantius earnestly requested him to do. He was afterwards
recalled thither, singularly honored by Julian the Apostate, nominated
his first physician, and excepted in several edicts which that prince
published against the Christians. He resisted strenuously the
insinuating discourses and artifices with which that prince endeavored
to seduce him, and was prevailed upon by the remonstrances of his father
and brother to resign his places at court, and prefer a retreat,
whatever solicitations Julian could use to detain him. Jovian honorably
restored him, and Valens, moreover, created him treasurer of his own
private purse, and of Bithynia. A narrow escape in an earthquake at
Nice, in Bithynia, in 368, worked so powerfully on his mind, that he
renounced the world, and died shortly after, in the beginning of the
year 369, leaving the poor his heirs. The Greeks honor his memory on the
9th of March, as Nicephorus testifies, (Hist. l. 11, c. 19,) and as
appears from the Menaea: in the Roman Martyrology he is named on the 25th
of February.

FEBRUARY XXVI.

ST. ALEXANDER, CONFESSOR,

PATRIARCH OF ALEXANDRIA.

From Theodoret, St. Athanasius, &c. See Hennant, Tillemont, t. 6, pp.
213, 240. Ceillier, t. 4.

A.D. 326.

ST. ALEXANDER succeeded St. Achillas in the see of Alexandria, in 313.
He was a man of apostolic doctrine and life, mild, affable, exceeding
charitable to the poor, and full of faith, zeal, and fervor. He assumed
to the sacred ministry chiefly those who had first sanctified themselves
in holy solitude, and was happy in the choice of bishops throughout all
Egypt. The devil, enraged to see the havoc made in his usurped empire
over mankind, by the disrepute idolatry was generally fallen into, used
his utmost endeavors to repair the loss to his infernal kingdom, by
procuring the establishment of a most impious heresy. Arius, a priest of
Alexandria, was his {471} principal instrument for that purpose. This
heresiarch was well versed in profane literature, was a subtle
dialectician, had an exterior show of virtue, and an insinuating
behavior; but was a monster of pride, vain-glory, ambition, envy, and
jealousy. Under an affected modesty he concealed a soul full of deceit,
and capable of all crimes. He joined Meletius, the bishop of Lycopolis,
in the beginning of his schism against St. Peter, our saint's