ANTIPATER, Bishop of Bostra. - He was consulted in 457 by the emperor Leo I on the authority of the Council of Chalcedon. The reply has not come down to us. About his life we have no other information, except that he was bound in friendship with St. Euthymius of Palestine (473). A. distinguished himself as a preacher and as a polemicist.
Two of his homilies, known for a long period only in Latin translation, were published in the original text by A. Ballerini, Sylloge monumentorum ad mysterium Conceptionis immaculatae Virginis Deiparae illustrandum, II, Rome 1856, pp. 1-26, 411-69. One celebrates the birth of the Precursor and also the mysteries that preceded it; the other, in honor of the Virgin, comments on the Gospel of the Annunciation and that of the Visitation. Both delivered on a Sunday, a week apart, they recall to us two elements of what may be called the primitive Eastern Advent, two feasts preparatory to the Nativity of the Lord. No serious reason exists to doubt their authenticity. Cf. M. Jugie, La première fête mariale. L'Avent primitif, in Echos d'Orient, 22 (1923), pp. 129-52. Of his other homilies we possess only quotations.
As a polemicist, A. is remembered for a Confutation of the Apology of Origen of Eusebius of Caesarea, in several books: a lost work, of which we find some interesting fragments in the acts of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (Mansi, XIII, coll. 177-80), and in the Sacred Parallels of St. John Damascene (PG, 96, 468, 488-505). Gelasius, abbot of the Great Laura near Jerusalem (537-46), had it read in church to turn his monks away from Origenist errors. The Byzantine Church honors A. as a saint on June 13.