St. Dionysius of Alexandria: Letters and Treatises. Saint Dionysius of Alexandria
andria Dionysius
St. Dionysius of Alexandria: Letters and Treatises
PREFACE
Not long after my edition of this Father’s writings appeared in the Cambridge Patristic Texts (1904), I was invited to translate the Letters and some of the other more certainly genuine fragments that remain into English for the present series; but it is not until now that I have been able to accomplish the task I then undertook. Since then, though chiefly occupied in other researches, I have naturally acquired a more extensive and accurate knowledge of St. Dionysius and his times, some of the results of which will be found in this volume. Nevertheless, I was bound to incorporate a considerable amount of the information and conclusions arrived at in the former work, and wish to express my acknowledgments to the Syndics of the University Press for leave to do so, as well as to those again whose names I mentioned as having assisted me before.
In the present book Dr. A. J. Mason was kind enough to advise me over the choice of extracts from the two treatises, On Nature and Refutation and Defence, and on one or two minor points, while a friend and neighbour (the Rev. L. Patterson) read through the whole of the MS. before it went to the printer and gave me the benefit of a fresh mind upon a number of small details of style and fact, for which I sincerely thank him.
Ripple by Dover
March 1918.
INTRODUCTION
1. None of the many influential occupants of the see of Alexandria and of the many distinguished heads of the Catechetical School in that city seem to have been held in higher respect by the ancients than Dionysius. By common consent he is styled “the Great,” while Athanasius, one of his most famous-successors as Bishop, calls him “Teacher of the Church universal,” and Basil (of Cæsarea) refers to him as “a person of canonical authority” (κανονικός). He took a prominent and important part in all the leading movements and controversies of the day, and his opinions always carried great weight, especially in Eastern Christendom. His writings are freely referred to and quoted, not only by Eusebius the historian,1 but also by Athanasius, Basil and John of Damascus amongst others. And what we gather of his personal story from his letters and various fragments embodied in the works of others – and very little, if anything else, for certain has come down to us – undoubtedly leaves the impression that the verdict of the ancient world is correct.
His Family and Earlier Life
2. The references to his family and early years are extremely scanty and vague. In the Chronicon Orientale, p. 94, he is stated to have been a Sabaita and sprung from “the chiefs and nobles of that race”: and several writers speak as if he had been a rhetorician before his conversion (as Cyprian of Carthage had been). The exact meaning of the term “Sabaita” above is doubtful. Strictly used, it should mean a member of the Sabaite convent near Jerusalem, and the Chronicon may be claiming Dionysius as that, though, of course, without any ground for the claim. If it is equivalent, however, to “Sabæan” here, it implies an Arab descent for him, which is hardly probable, as he seems always to consider himself connected by education and residence, if not by birth, with the city-folk of Alexandria, whom he distinguishes from the Coptic inhabitants of Egypt (Αἰγύπτιοι); so that it would be rather surprising to find that his family came from the remoter parts of Arabia, where the Sabæans dwelt. The other tradition of his having been a rhetorician may be due to some confusion between our Dionysius and a much later Alexandrian writer of the same name, who edited the works of the Areopagite with notes and wrote other treatises. On the other hand, Dionysius’s literary style is such that it might very well have been formed by the study and practice of rhetoric, while he has been thought himself to corroborate the statement of the Chronicon Orientale, as to the high position of his family, in his reply to Germanus (p. 49), where he refers to the “losses of dignities” which he has suffered for the Faith.
3. He was probably a priest, and not less than thirty, when he became head of the Catechetical School in 231, and in 264 he excused himself from attendance at the Council of Antioch on the ground of age and infirmity; and so it is a safe inference that he was born about or before 200, being thus nearly of an age with Cyprian of Carthage, and only ten or fifteen years younger than Origen, his master.
His Conversion
4. The Chronicon Orientale assigns the reading of St. Paul’s letters as the cause of his conversion to Christianity, and proceeds to state how, after their perusal, he presented himself for baptism to Demetrius, then Bishop of Alexandria, who admitted him in due course. Whether this was actually the cause of his conversion or not, we know from what he has himself told us in his letter to Philemon (p. 56), that both before and after baptism he was a diligent student of all that was written for and against Christianity.
Was He Married or Not?
5. Whether, in accordance with the common practice of the Eastern Church at that time, Dionysius was married or not, is a moot point. He addressed his treatise περὶ Φύσεως to one Timotheus ὁ παῖς, and we read of ὁι παῖδες (of whom Timotheus was one) as accompanying him in his flight (p. 44). One would naturally infer from this that he was then a widower (his wife not being mentioned), and that these were his sons; but they may have been his pupils, on the supposition that he was still Catechete as well as Bishop, or, which is less likely, his servants.2
He becomes Head of the Catechetical School
6. When Demetrius died in 231, Heraclas, who for some years had been associated with Origen at the Catechetical School and had just been left in charge of it by him on his final retirement that year from Alexandria, was elected Bishop, while Dionysius, who had himself been a pupil of Origen there, was appointed to fill the vacancy he created. It is possible that the treatise περὶ Φύσεως, extracts from which are given below (on pp. 91 ff.), was composed while Dionysius held this important post, and that a commentary on Ecclesiastes, some genuine fragments of which probably remain, belongs to the same period. The former of these is much the more valuable work, for in it for the first time a Christian undertook systematically to refute the atomistic theories of Epicurus and his followers.
He becomes Bishop of Alexandria
7. Sixteen years later, in 247, upon the death of Heraclas, Dionysius succeeded to the bishopric as the fourteenth occupant of the see, possibly, as has already been suggested, without at once resigning his post at the School. Philip the Arabian (of Bostra) had then been Emperor for three years, a position he was destined to retain for two years longer. Like Alexander Severus before him, he was known to favour the Christians, and Dionysius himself bears witness to the comparative mildness of his rule (p. 37). For a short time, therefore, the new Bishop and his flock were left in peace, though even before the death of Philip signs of the coming storm appeared. In the last year of his reign Dionysius tells Fabius, Bishop of Antioch (p. 35), that “the prophet and poet of evil to this city, whoever he was,” stirred up the populace against the Christians in Alexandria, and several persons were cruelly martyred. This reign of terror lasted some time, but was interrupted in the autumn of 249 by the revolution which caused the deposition and death of Philip, and which set Decius on the throne in his stead. The respite was only too brief, for by the beginning of the new year the edict which Decius had issued was being actively carried into effect. The Bishops were at first singled out for attack. Origen, though not one of them, was included among the earlier victims – on account, no doubt, of his prominence as a scholar and a teacher – being imprisoned at Tyre and cruelly tortured, though not actually martyred.
Under the Persecution of Decius
8. Decius’s reversal of his predecessor’s policy towards the Christians was probably due to reasons of state and expediency rather than,
In one of Eusebius’s works (the