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Serapion, Surnamed Scholasticus

Wace's Dictionary of Early Christian Biography

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Serapion (9), surnamed Scholasticus, bp. of Thmuis in Egypt. He was a friend of St. Athanasius and St. Anthony of the desert, and occupied a position of some importance in 4th-cent. theological struggles. Anthony bequeathed one of his sheepskin cloaks to Serapion and the other to Athanasius ( Vita S. Anth. in Opp. S. Athan., Migne, Patr. Lat. t. xxvi. col. 971). Serapion's literary activity was considerable. St. Jerome ( Catal. No. 99) mentions several of his writings, as his treatise contra Manichaeos, his de Psalmorum Titulis (now lost), and some epistles. His work against the Manicheans, described by Jerome as "Egregium librum," and noticed by Photius ( Cod. 85), was for the first time printed in its original form by Brinkmann in 1894. It had previously been mixed up with a similar work by Titus of Bostra. In its restored form it is a valuable argument against Manicheism. Two letters by him were pub. by Cardinal Mai—one a consolatory letter to bp. Eudoxius, who had been tortured; the other censuring some monks of Alexandria. In Texte und Untersuchungen (Leipz. 1898) Wobbermin published a dogmatic letter "on the Father and the Son," and 30 liturgical prayers, the 1st and 15th of which are the work of Serapion. They have been reprinted, with valuable notes and discussions, by F. E. Brightman in the Oxf. Journ. of Theol. Studies, 1899–1910, under the title of The Sacramentary of Serapion of Thmuis, and an English trans., ed. by bp. Wordsworth of Salisbury, has been pub. by S.P.C.K.

[G.T.S.]