Alexander of Thessaloniki

Saint Alexander of Thessalonica was archbishop of Thessalonica in the fourth century and, according to some sources, a martyr. He is commemorated on 9 November according to the record; our sources do not give the day. The sources keep two strands which hardly fit together: one shows him as a martyr under the emperor Maximian (305 to 311), the other as present at the First Ecumenical Council (325) and at Tyre (335) and archbishop from 305 to 335. They cannot easily be taken as about the same person and the same tenure, so we read both with reserve.

Alexander was among the bishops present at the First Ecumenical Council. According to the sources, he was an active supporter of Saint Athanasius the Great in his struggle with Arianism, for the honour of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and raised the prestige of the Church of Eastern Illyricum. The Russian source says that he signed at Nicaea as bishop of Thessalonica, on behalf of those under him of Macedonia First and Second, of all Hellas, Europe, Scythia, Illyricum, Thessaly and Achaea, and that he is mentioned by Gelasius of Cyzicus. In Athanasius' work Against the Arians two letters of Bishop Alexander are preserved. The first is of 322, to Athanasius, in which Alexander expresses his satisfaction that the innocence of Athanasius, accused of the murder of Arsenius, had been proved. The second is to the imperial envoy, the comes Dionysius, in which Alexander condemns the machinations against Athanasius of the heretical bishops of the council of Tyre of 335. In the same work Athanasius condemns the Arians who tried to make Alexander out a criminal. Alexander of Thessalonica's participation in the council of Tyre of 335 and in the consecration of the church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem on 17 September 335 is indirectly confirmed by Eusebius of Caesarea in his life of Constantine the Great.

Some scholars hold that the letter of Alexander of Alexandria, included in the Church History of Theodoret of Cyrrhus, in which Arianism is condemned as heresy, is addressed to Alexander of Thessalonica, not to Alexander of Constantinople. The baptism of Theodora, daughter of Maximian, by Bishop Alexander of Thessalonica is described by the abbot of the Akapnion monastery, Ignatius. In the synaxarion of the Holy Martyr Matrona of Thessalonica, part of the Synaxarion of Constantinople, it is said that Alexander, the first bishop of Thessalonica after the Edict of Milan of 313, brought her relics into the city and built a church.

The account of the martyrdom, in the Russian source, says that for confessing Christ he was seized by pagans and brought before the emperor Maximian. Not only did he openly call himself a Christian, but, at the demand to sacrifice to idols, he overturned the idolatrous altar in indignation. The emperor ordered him beheaded. When the execution was carried out, the emperor and the executioner saw an angel of heaven going before the soul of the holy martyr Alexander as it ascended to heaven. The emperor allowed the Christians to bury the saint's body with honour in the city of Thessalonica, which they did with joy.