Saint Dionysius of Alexandria: Letters and Treatises

St. Dionysius of Alexandria: Letters and Treatises

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 Csarea) refers to him as a person of canonical authority (). 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 othersand very little, if anything else, for certain has come down to usundoubtedly leaves the impression that the verdict of the ancient world is correct. 2. The references to his family and early years are extremely scanty and vague. In the Chronicon [10] 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 Saban 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 (); so that it would be rather surprising to find that his family came from the remoter parts of Arabia, where the Sabans 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, Dionysiuss 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 [11] 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. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 36539
Author: Dionysius, of Alexandria
Release Date: Jun 27, 2011
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Translator: Feltoe, Charles Lett