This bishop and theologian, a highly cultivated pagan who became a Christian, was elected bishop of his native Poitiers, in France, at age 35, while his wife was still living. For his unswerving opposition to Arianism, the heresy that Jesus Christ was in some way subordinate to God, he was banished to Asia Minor in 356 by an Arian emperor. But he continued to study Greek theology and oppose Arianism, and was sent back to France for being a “mischief-maker.” He left extensive writings and was named a doctor of the church in 1851.
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