ALEXANDRIA, COUNCILS OF. The following councils were held at Alexandria: 1, A.D. 231, in which Origen was deposed from the priesthood ; 2, A.D. 235, against Ammonius ; 3, A.D. 258, against No- vatus ; 4, A.D. 263, against Nepotianus and Cerinthus {Fabric, ii, 292) ; 5, A.D. 305, 306, or 308, against Me- letius, bishop of Lycopolis, in Egypt ; 6, A.D. 315, against Arius, St. Alexander presiding; 7, A.D, 319 or 320, against Arius and the Meletians and Sabellians — Hosius of Cordova was present ; 8, A.D. 321, against Arius ; 9, A.D. 326, in which St. Athanasius was elect- ed patriarch ; 10, A.D. 340, in favor of St. Athanasius ; 11, A.D. 362, in which the divinity of the Holy Spirit, the Incarnation, the term Hypostasis, and other mat- ters, were treated of; 12, A.D. 363, in which St. Athanasius drew up a confession of faith, which was presented to the Emperor Jovianus ; 13, A.D. 399, in which the Origenists were condemned; 14, A.D. 430, in which St. Cyril condemned Nestorius ; 15, A.D. 451, against the Eutychians ; 16, A.D. 578, by Damianus, the Eutychian patriarch, against Peter of Antioch ; 17, A.D. 633, under Cyrus the Monothelite, in which the Monothelite errors were adroitly defended. For a good summary of the doings of these councils, see Lan- don, Manual of Councils, p. 17 sq.
Alexan'drian ('AXt 'iav^gt vq), an inhabitant of Alexandria in Egypt, spec, a Jew living there (Acts vi, 9 ; xviii, 24). Alexandria was much frequented by Jews, so that 10,000 of them are said to have been numbered among its inhabitants (Philo, In Flacc. p. 971 ; Josephus, Ant. xix, 5, 2). See Alexandria. It appears from Acts vi, 9, that the}' were accustomed to attend the festivals at Jerusalem, and that they even had a synagogue there for their special use (Kuinol, Hackett, in loc). See Synagogue.
ALEXANDRIAN CHRONICLE, the name given to a MS. found in Sicily by Jerome Surita, and carried to Rome, and preserved by Antonio Augustine, auditor of the Rota. Charles Sigonius and Onuphrius Pan- vinius made considerable use of it in the composition of their Consular Fasti, and published it in Greek and Latin. The name "Sicilian Fasti''' was given to these annals because of their having been found in that isl- and. It is not so easy to assign a reason for the name of " ihs Chronicle of 'Alexandria" except that the name of Peter of Alexandria is at the head of the Augsburg MS. found in the library of Augsburg by Casaubon. Mattheus Raderus, a Jesuit, published the first com- plete edition of this chronicle at Munich, in 1615, in Greek and Latin. Dufresne, who published an im- proved edition (Gr. and Lat. with notes, Paris, 1688), gives it the name of the Paschal Chronicle, because it treats of the time of celebrating Easter. Cave and Usshcr attribute, it to George Pisides, A.D. 640 ; Cas- imir Oudin to George of Alexandria, A.D. 620. This chronicle begins at the creation, and is carried up to the tenth year of the consulate of the Emperor Ilerac- lius, or A.D. 628. It seems to have been written by two authors, of whom one carried the work on to the year of Christ 354, and the other completed it. It is compiled without any great judgment or research, but the writer evidently had access to many ancient mon- uments, which are now lost. — Cave, Hist. Lit. anno 640.
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ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY. This remarkable I however, in several passages of the N. T. (Matt, i, collection of books, the largest of the ancient world, 1-xxv, G ; John vi, 50-viii, 52 ; 2 Cor. iv, 13-xii, G), was founded by Ptolemy Soter, in the city of Alexan- and in part of the Psalms, where the leaves are total! dria, in Egypt. Even in the time of its first man- ~
ager, Demetrius Phalereus, a banished Athenian, the number of volumes or rolls already amounted to 50,000; and during its most flourishing period, under the direction of Zenodotus, Aristarchus of Byzantium, Apollonius Rhodius, and others, is said to have con- tained 400,000, or, according to another authority, 700,000. The greater part of this library, which em- braced the collected literature of Rome, Greece, India, and Egypt, was contained in the Museum, in the quar- ter of, Alexandria called Brucheium. During the siege of Alexandria by Julius Cassar this part of the library was destroyed by fire ; but it was afterward replaced by the collection of Pergamos, which was presented to Queen Cleopatra by Mark Antony, to the great annoyance of the educated Romans. The other part of the library was kept in the Serapeion, the tem- ple of Jupiter Serapis, where it remained till the time of Theodosius the Great. When the emperor permit- ted all the heathen temples in the Roman empire to be destroyed, the magnificent temple of Jupiter Sera- pis was not spared. A mob of fanatic Christians, led on by the Archbishop Theophilus, stormed and de- stroyed the temple, together, it is most likely, with the greater part of its literary treasures, in A.D. 391. It was at this time that the destruction of the library
missing. Letters here and there have also been cut away in binding; and in a considerable part of the N. T. one of the upper corners of the leaves is gone. The N. T. books are found in the order in which they are arranged in the other ancient MSS. : the Catholic Epistles follow the Acts ; then come the Pauline Epistles, but with that to the Hebrews before the Pas- toral Epistles ; the Apocalypse, so rare in extant an- cient codices, stands as usual at the close of the N. T. ; and in this copy it has been preserved from the injury which has befallen both ends of the volume by reason of the Epistles of Clement having been added. The MS., which is on thin vellum and in semi-folio form, is now bound in four volumes, the first three of which contain the O. T. The pages are about thirteen inches long and ten broad ; the writing on each is divided into two columns of fifty lines each, having about twenty letters or upward in a line. These letters are continuously written in uncial characters, without any space between the words, the uncials being of an ele- gant yet simple form, in a firm and uniform hand, though in some places larger than in others. The punctuation merely consists of a point placed at the end of the sentence, usually on a level with the top of the preceding letter, but not always, and a vacant space follows the point at the end of the paragraph,