Serapion of Thmuis

d. c.362. Bishop of Thmuis. Superior of a colony of monks and friend of Antony, he was consecrated bishop of Thmuis, Lower Egypt, before 339. He was sent by Athanasius with four other Egyptian bishops in 356 to the court of Emperor Constantius II to refute Arian charges. Later he was ousted from his see by an Arian, Ptolemaius (359). He reported to Athanasius concerning some Egyptian Christians who held that the Holy Spirit was merely a “creature,” doubtless forerunners of the Pneumatomachi.* Athanasius wrote him four letters, Ep. ad Serapionem, which constitute the first formal statement of the deity of the Spirit (c.359). Serapion wrote a treatise Against the Manichaeans (pub. 1931), a lost work on the titles of the Psalms, and letters (three of which are extant) addressed to Bishop Eudoxius, the monks of Alexandria, and some disciples of Antony. He was also author of a sacramentary, the Euchologion.