Athanasius the Magician

Athanasius the Magician is a figure in the life of the Holy Great Martyr George, venerated by the Orthodox Church among the martyrs. He was a magician at the court of the emperor Diocletian and, according to the story, died a martyr in the year 303. He is commemorated on 23 April.

Athanasius is known from the Martyrdom of George, written by Theodore Daphnopates in the tenth century. According to the story, at the trial of George by the emperor Diocletian, the magician Athanasius was summoned and brought his potions. One was to make a man obedient, and the other was a deadly poison. Neither had any power over George.

Athanasius then proposed to put George and his faith to the test by asking a miracle of him: to raise a dead man before the emperor and all of them, and then they too would submit to his God as the almighty God. From a distance a tomb was visible in which a man whom Athanasius had known in life had recently been laid. If George raised him, he would truly have conquered.

The Martyrdom of George relates that at George's prayer the dead man rose, and the magician Athanasius fell at the saint's feet and confessed that Christ is almighty God, asking the martyr to forgive the sins he had committed in ignorance. By the emperor's order Athanasius and the man raised by George were beheaded.

The memory of Saint Athanasius is found in the Greek verse synaxaria and in the Menaion printed at Venice in 1603. He has no service of his own. In the Menaia used by the Greek churches there is, after the sixth ode of the canon of Matins, a verse synaxarion on him.