St. Aristides of Athens

St. Aristides of Athens was a Christian philosopher of the early second century, one of the earliest of the apologists who set out to defend and commend the faith to the pagan world using the tools of Greek learning. He addressed his Apology to the Roman emperor, most likely Hadrian or Antoninus Pius, about the year 125 to 140, pleading the cause of the Christians against slander and persecution.

Long known only by name, his Apology was remarkably recovered in modern times, first in an Armenian fragment and then, in 1889, nearly complete in a Syriac version, with portions also found embedded in a later Greek work. In it Aristides surveys the various peoples and their ideas of God, arguing that the Christians alone possess the true knowledge of the one Creator and, above all, that their manner of life, marked by love, purity, care for the poor, and reverence, gives living proof of the truth of their faith. He is venerated as a saint, his memory kept on 31 August.