ASCILEPIADE DI GAZA

ASCLEPIADE of GAZA. - A defender of the consubstantiality of the Word, he was opposed by the Arians, who at the Council of Antioch (330) deposed him from his see. Theodoret reports him as present at the Synod of Tyre, along with a few others accused by the Arians of corrupting orthodoxy. With St. Athanasius and Marcellus of Ancyra, he personally pleaded his case before Pope Julius and attended the Roman Synod of 341, by which he was reinstated. Relying on this sentence, he presented himself at the Council of Sardica in 343, together with the two fellow exiles. This was enough to cause the Eastern participants in the council to abandon Sardica. After their departure, A. succeeded in presenting the documents of his trial, drawn up at Antioch, in the presence of his accusers and of Eusebius of Caesarea; his innocence was thereby established, and he was reinstated in his see. How long he remained there is unclear. In 346 he was not among the Palestinian bishops who welcomed St. Athanasius on his return to Alexandria.