Aristidis of Athens
Greek Christian author
Feast: 31 August (not on the universal Roman calendar; kept in the Roman Martyrology or local calendars)
Who they were
Aristides was a Christian philosopher at Athens in the second century. According to Eusebius, when a persecution of the Christians there followed the Emperor Hadrian's stay in Greece, Aristides wrote a defence of the faith and presented it to Hadrian at Athens in 126; some scholars date it instead to the reign of Antoninus Pius. St. Jerome called him a most eloquent philosopher.
His Apology argues that only Christians have a true idea of God and contrasts the upright lives of Christians with pagan ways. It was lost for about a thousand years, until an Armenian fragment was published in 1878 and a Syriac version of the whole text was found at Mount Sinai in 1889.
The miracles
The Catholic Encyclopedia does not describe any miracles or a formal cause.
Why that counted as sanctity
An early Christian philosopher whose defence of the faith was presented to the Emperor Hadrian.
- Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), via New Advent - Aristides
- Roman Martyrology, 31 August (Italian Bishops' Conference, Santo del giorno)
- Wikidata Q349916 — dates, feast day and identifiers (CC0)
- English Wikipedia — Aristides of Athens (CC BY-SA)
Checked against the sources listed on 22 September 2026. Corrections welcome.