Saint DENYS le Grand d'ALEXANDRIE (DIONYSIUS), évêque et confesseur (II)

Saint Denys d'Alexandrie

Évêque (+ 265) 

Il connut l'impitoyable persécution de l'empereur Dèce et il fut très affecté par les nombreuses apostasies. Bien qu'il soit resté caché dans sa maison, il fut arrêté à son tour, mais délivré par une troupe de paysans chrétiens qui attaquèrent ses gardes durant un transfert. Quand la paix revint, il eut à défendre l'unité de l'Eglise attaquée par le schisme de Novatien qui refusait le pardon à ceux qui, faibles, avaient apostasié et pour lesquels il était miséricordieux. Il connut, après un temps de paix, la persécution de l'empereur Valérien. Il fut exilé, mais lorsque l'empereur, lui-même, fut fait prisonnier par les Perses, la situation redevint paisible. Il eut de nombreux échanges épistolaires avec le Pape saint Denys de Rome quant à la divinité de Jésus-Christ. Les Églises d'Orient mentionnent tout particulièrement ses disciples diacres les saints Faustus, Gaïus, Eusèbe et Chairemon. 

Au 3 octobre: À Alexandrie, vers 265, saint Denis, évêque, personnage d'une profonde érudition. Célèbre pour avoir souvent confessé la foi, riche en mérites à cause de la diversité de ses souffrances et de ses tourments, il s'endormit, plein de jours, en confesseur de la foi, au temps des empereurs Valérien et Gallien.

Martyrologe romain

SOURCE : https://nominis.cef.fr/contenus/saint/157/Saint-Denys-d-Alexandrie.html

Saint  Denys  a  été  appelé  par  saint  Athanase  « le  docteur  de l’Église  catholique  »,  et  l’historien  ecclésiastique  Tillemont  ne craint  pas  de  dire  qu’il  « a  peut-être  été  en  effet  le  plus  grand ornement  de  cette  seconde  église  du  monde,  —  Alexandrie, —  depuis  saint  Marc  jusqu’à  saint  Athanase  ».  De  fait,  saint Denys  a  illustré  son  siège  non  seulement  par  la  sainteté  de  sa vie,  mais  encore  par  son  courage  à  confesser  sa  foi  pendant deux  cruelles  persécutions,  et  par  le  zèle  qu’il  déploya  pour défendre  la  vérité  contre  toutes  les  sectes  hérétiques  de  son temps.

Il naquit  païen,  d’une  famille distinguée  et riche  d’Alexandrie, vers  la  fin  du  IIè siècle,  bien  probablement.  De  talents  remarquables,  il  se  distingua  dans  l’enseignement  de  la  rhétorique  et par  l’exercice  de  plusieurs  charges  publiques.  Certains,  de quelques-unes  de  ses  paroles,  ont  cru  devoir  conclure  qu’il  avait été  marié  et  même  avait  eu  plusieurs  enfants.  Mais  d’autres l’ont  nié.  Il  semble  qu’il  fut  attiré  au  christianisme  par  son goût  pour  la  lecture  qui  lui  faisait  aborder  toutes  sortes  de livres  :  ayant  ainsi  étudié  les  œuvres  de  saint  Paul,  il  fut gagné  par  elles  et  devint  le  converti  de  l’Apôtre.  Dès  lors  il  se donna  sans  réserve  à  sa  foi  nouvelle,  renonça  aux  espérances comme  aux  joies  du  monde,  et  voulut  se  pénétrer  à  fond  de  la doctrine  chrétienne.  Il s’attacha  donc à Origène, suivit  ses  leçons et  ne  tarda  pas  à  être  compté  parmi  les  meilleurs  élèves  de son  école  de  catéchèses.

Bientôt  la  confiance  de  l’évêque  d’Alexandrie  l’éleva  au sacerdoce,  lui  imposa  la  charge  d’instruire  le  peuple.  Pour mieux  s’acquitter  de  ce  devoir,  Denys  se  livra  à  la  lecture  des livres  des  hérétiques  : il  pensait  pouvoir  ainsi  mieux  les  réfuter. Mais  des  amis  timorés  lui  inspirèrent  des  craintes ;  sa  conscience  s’inquiéta  aussi  :  ne  courait-il  pas  le  danger  de  pervertir  sa  foi,  en  se  mettant  en  contact  si  fréquent  avec  l’erreur? Certes  il  n’avait  pas  tort  de  se  le  demander.  La  conduite  qu’il tenait  ne  saurait  se  conseiller  à  tous  ;  on  ne  côtoie  pas  le  précipice  sans  s’exposer  au  vertige.  Dieu  cependant  le  rassura dans  une  vision  : sa  science,  lui  fut-il  dit,  et  son  devoir  d’enseigner  ses  frères  l’autorisaient  à  prendre  connaissance  des  doctrines  erronées ;  et  la  grâce  divine,  qu’il  sollicitait,  le  ferait échapper  à  la  contagion.

Au  bout  de  seize  ou  dix-sept  ans  de  cet  enseignement,  qui lui  attirèrent  une  réputation  bien  méritée,  Héraclas,  son  évêque, étant  venu  à  mourir,  Denys  fut  élu  à  sa  place ;  c’était  en l’année  248.  En  même  temps  que  lui,  saint  Cyprien  montait sur  le  trône  épiscopal  de  Carthage.  L’un  et  l’autre  seraient  la gloire  de  l’Église  d’Afrique.  Mais la vie  aussi  de l’un et de  l’autre s’écoulerait  au  milieu  de  terribles  épreuves  ;  si  le  martyre  ne devait  pas  couronner  Denys,  comme  Cyprien,  rien,  sauf  la mort,  ne  serait  épargné  à  l’évêque  d’Alexandrie.  Un  an  s’était à  peine  écoulé  ; tandis  que  dans  le  reste  du  monde  les  chrétiens jouissaient  de  la  paix  trop  courte  que  leur  assurait  la  modération  de  l’empereur  Philippe,  une  émeute  populaire  saccageait la  ville  de  Denys  et  déjà  multipliait  les  martyrs.  Puis  Dèce fut  porté  au  pouvoir  par  l’armée  ;  et  ce  fanatique  partisan  du paganisme  étendit  la  persécution  en  la  rendant  plus  sauvage.

Dès  le  commencement  de  250,  l’arrêt  en  fut  affiché  ;  tout  de suite  le  préfet  de  Libye,  Sabinus,  fit  rechercher  Denys.  Le policier  chargé  de  ce  soin  battit  le  pays  en  tout  sens  pendant quatre  jours,  persuadé  que  l’évêque  se  cachait,  tandis  que  lui, paisiblement,  l’attendait  dans  sa  maison.  Dieu  cependant  lui dit  d’en  sortir,  raconta-t-il  plus  tard,  et  lui  donna  le  moyen de  rendre  un  grand  service,  —  dont  il  ne  s’explique  pas  davantage,  —  à  quelques-uns  de  ses  fils.  Mais  ce  bien  accompli,  il tomba  aux  mains  des  émissaires  du  préfet  ;  ceux-ci  l’arrêtèrent avec  ses  compagnons  et  l’emmenèrent  à  Taposiris,  dans  le Maréotide,  pour  le  conduire  plus  loin  encore.  La  nuit  venue, des  paysans  chrétiens,  avertis,  fondent  sur  la  maison,  chassent les  gardes,  font  lever  malgré  lui l’évêque,  qui  refusait  ce  secours et  réclamait  le  martyre,  et  de force  le  cachent dans un lieu  secret du  désert  de  Libye.  De  cette  retraite,  Denys,  au  mieux  qu’il pût,  pourvoyait  au  salut  de  son  église  désolée.  La  persécution faisait  des  saints ;  elle  avait  fait  plus  encore  d’apostats,  car  les cœurs  s’étaient  amollis  dans  une  longue  prospérité,  et  la  fureur de  Dèce  et  de  ses  agents  avait  tout  épouvanté.  Par  ses  diacres, qui  se glissaient  dans  la  ville  au  péril  de  leur  vie,  Denys  réveilla les consciences,  ranima  les  courages,  bénit  les  confesseurs,  releva les  tombés.  La  tempête  fut  courte  heureusement.  Mais  quand, Dèce  et  Gallus  étant  morts,  la  paix  revint  à  l’Église,  ce  fut pour qu’elle vît  de nouveaux malheurs et subît d’autres  épreuves.

Lorsque  le  pape  saint  Corneille  avait  été  élu  pour prendre  la place  de  saint  Fabien  martyrisé  en  250,  un  prêtre  de  Rome, Novatien,  avait  en  face  de  lui  suscité  un  schisme  qui  avait fait,  soit  en  Italie,  soit  en  Afrique,  de  nombreux  adeptes.  Saint Denys  s’éleva  contre  lui,  dans  une  lettre  où  il  le  blâmait  énergiquement  de  son  ambition  et  l’exhortait  au  repentir.  Il  se prononça  nettement  en  faveur  de  saint  Corneille  et  lui  apporta toujours  l’aide  de  sa  loyale  et  ferme  parole.  Puis,  dès  252,  la peste  se  déclara  violente  dans  la  ville  d’Alexandrie  et  même dans  toute  l’Afrique  ;  elle  dura,  avec  des  intermittences, jusqu’en  263,  donnant  aux  fidèles  et  à  leur  évêque  de  trop nombreuses  occasions  d’exercer  une  charité  vraiment  chrétienne.  Denys  lui-même  en  a  raconté  les  merveilles;  il  a  dit comment  plusieurs,  «  après  avoir  rétabli  les  autres  en  santé par  les  soins  qu’ils  en  avaient  pris,  gagnaient  leur  mal  et  en mouraient,  faisant  passer  à  eux-mêmes  la  mort  dont  ils  les avaient  délivrés.  Après  qu’ils  avaient  soutenu  entre  leurs  bras les  corps  de  leurs  saints  frères  expirants,  après  leur  avoir  fermé la  bouche,  nettoyé  les  yeux,  les  avoir  portés  hors  de  leur  lit sur leurs  épaules,  les  avoir  mis  en  état  d’être  ensevelis,  les  avoir embrassés,  baisés,  lavés,  parés  de  leurs  habits,  ils  recevaient peu  de temps  après les mêmes  devoirs  par  d’autres  qui  imitaient leur  zèle  et  leur  charité.  »  L’évêque  était  l’âme  de  ces  admirables  dévouements  ; avant  d’en  raconter  les  pieux  excès,  il  les avait  lui-même  encouragés  et  partagés.

En  même  temps  il  défendait  la  vérité  et  l’unité  chrétienne contre  Népos,  qui  avait  inventé  et  propagé  l’erreur  des  millénaristes  :  cette  secte  prétendait  trouver  dans  l’Apocalypse l’annonce  d’un  règne  temporel  du  Christ revenu sur terre  pour y  apporter  une  prospérité  matérielle  de  mille  ans. Denys combattit cette étrange  hérésie ; il  porta  lui-même  la doctrine chrétienne  en  différents  lieux  de  son  diocèse,  et  il  eut,  comme  il le  raconte,  la  consolation  de  trouver,  parmi les adeptes de Népos, des âmes  droites  et  sincères,  en  grand  nombre,  qui disputaient avec calme,  écoutaient  avec  attention,  se  rendaient avec  loyauté.

Dans  la  dissension  qui s’émut, si vive à certains moments, entre l’Église romaine et celle  d’Afrique, entre Etienne et Cyprien, au sujet de la rebaptisation des hérétiques  et de l’invalidité du baptême qu’ils conféraient, Denys travailla de toutes ses  forces à apaiser  les esprits,  à concilier les partis, à trouver des mesures qui  rapprocheraient  les âmes irritées. Sans doute son avis n’a pas prévalu : il  aurait voulu, tout en reconnaissant que  le  baptême  donné  par  les  hérétiques  selon  une  formule orthodoxe  était  valide,  qu’il  fût  permis  aux  églises,  qui  en avaient  l’habitude,  de  le  réitérer  ;  cette  faculté  n’était  point conforme  au  respect  dû  au  sacrement.  Mais  il  faut  du  moins louer  Denys  de  son  désir  d’accorder  le  dogme  avec  la  liberté et  surtout  de  réunir  tous  les  cœurs  dans  la  même  charité.

Son  erreur  n’était  pas  due  à  une  défaillance  de  sa  foi  ; il  en fut  de  même  lorsque,  avec  un  grand  zèle,  il  s’opposa  à  l’hérésie de  Sabellius,  née  en  257.  Elle  niait  la  distinction  des  trois  personnes  de  la  sainte  Trinité,  qu’elle  prétendait  réduire  à  n’être que  de  simples  dénominations.  Denys,  invoqué  par  les  orthodoxes  aussi  bien  que  par  les  novateurs,  écrivit  contre  ceux-ci une  réfutation  pleine  de  force.  Mais  sa  foi  demeurant  très  sûre, il  employa  des  expressions  qui  prêtaient  le  flanc  à  une  interprétation  erronée.  Dans  son  application  à  distinguer  nettement le  Père  du  Fils,  il  semblait  mettre  celui-ci  dans  une  dépendance, dans  une  infériorité  telles,  qu’Arius  bientôt  ne  dirait  guère  autre chose.  Il  fut  dénoncé  au  pape  Denys,  en  260,  par  des  adversaires  qui  peut-être  attaquaient  l’homme  plus  que  la  doctrine et  sûrement  faisait  preuve  de  peu  d’indulgence.  Denys  se  justifia  en  quatre  livres  d’Apologie,  où  il  montra  l’intégrité  de  sa foi,  expliqua  ses  formules,  mais  ne  rétracta  rien.  Et  le  pape ne  crut  pas  devoir  insister,  sinon  en  exposant  d’une  manière objective  et  très  nette  l’enseignement  catholique.

La  paix  dont  Valérien  assurait  alors  le  bienfait  à  l’Église  ne dura  pas  longtemps.  Il  était  empereur  depuis  cinq  années  seulement  lorsque,  en  257,  dans  le  désir  de  s’approprier  ce  qu’il croyait  être  les  grandes  richesses  de  l’Église,  il  déchaîna  une des  plus  violentes  persécutions.  Denys  en  fut  une  des  premières victimes.  Mandé  devant  son  tribunal  par  le  préfet Æmilien, il  fut,  après  une  calme,  mais  très  ferme  profession  de  foi,  exilé à  Kephro,  dans  la  Libye  :  « il  ne  devait  pas  s’en  éloigner,  sous peine  de  vie.  » Mais  avant  de  partir  il  eut  soin  de  mettre  en mains  sûres  l’administration  de  son  peuple  et  d’organiser  les rapports  qu’il  conserverait  avec  lui.

De  fait,  non  seulement  il continua  de  le  « présider,  absent  de  corps,  mais  présent  d’esprit  »,  selon  son  expression,  mais  encore  il  fit  servir  son  exil, —  à  Kephro  d’abord,  puis  à  Colluthion,  sur  la  grande  voie  qui menait  d’Alexandrie  à Carthage, —  à semer,  parmi  les  peuplades ignorantes  de  ces  régions,  la  parole  évangélique.  On  n’eut pas le temps d’exercer contre lui des violences qu’il appelait de ses vœux.  Valérien  mourut  ;  Gallien,  son  successeur,  fit  cesser  la persécution.  Denys  revint  dans  sa  ville,  non  pas  pour  y  trouver la tranquillité  cependant;  l’empire  était  en  convulsions;  les  différentes  provinces  s’insurgeaient  tour  à  tour.  Æmilien,  proclamé empereur  en  Egypte,  menaçait  les  chrétiens.  Mais  son  pouvoir fut  de courte  durée, et les dernières années du vieil  évêque  s’écoulèrent  dans  la  paix  : paix  relative,  car  en  263  la  peste  renouvela  ses  ravages, désolant le cœur, exerçant le  zèle  du  Saint; et  en  264,  contre  Paul  de  Samosate,  qui  ne  reconnaissait  en Jésus-Christ  qu’une  personne  humaine,  en  qui  aurait  habité le  Verbe,  il  dut  encore  élever  la  voix.  Un  concile  fut  réuni  à Antioche  pour  condamner  cette  hérésie ; Denys  y  fut  convoqué ; sa  réputation  de  science  et de sainteté le faisait  considérer comme  un  des  arbitres  les  plus  autorisés  de  la  doctrine  chrétienne.  Mais  la  vieillesse  et  l’infirmité  l’obligèrent  à  s’excuser; il  dut  se  contenter  d’écrire  aux  Pères  du  concile  une  lettre  dont l’importance  fut  reconnue  si  grande  par  eux,  qu’ils  la  rendirent publique  en  l’envoyant  à toute  l’Église.

Ce  fut  pour  Denys  le  chant  du  cygne. Il  était  bien  dans l’impossibilité  de  se  rendre  à  Antioche,  car  il  mourut  pendant  la tenue  même  du  concile,  en  un  âge très  avancé,  après  dix-sept ans  d’épiscopat.  L’influence  qu’il  exerçait  par  sa  science  était fort  augmentée  par  sa  vertu.  Saint  Jérôme  dit  de  ses  ouvrages qu’on  y  admire  également  « l’érudition  du  siècle  et  la  connaissance  des  Écritures  ».  Son  éloquence  est  à  la  hauteur  de  sa théologie  ;  sa  logique  puissante  ne  nuit  pas  à  la  beauté  de sa  langue.  Mais  il  faut  surtout  rendre  hommage  à  sa  modération,  à  sa  sagesse  et  à  sa  charité.  Ainsi  a-t-il  bien  mérité  le nom  de  Grand,  qu’après  saint  Basile  nombre  de  Pères  lui  ont décerné.

Il semble  qu’il mourut  le 31  août  ou le 10 septembre ; l’Église latine  l’a  fêté  longtemps  le  17  novembre.  Néanmoins  les  Grecs ont  toujours  placé  sa  fête  au  3  octobre  ;  et  c’est  la  date  qui définitivement  a  été  adoptée  par le  Martyrologe  romain.

Père Moreau, S.J, Saints et saintes de Dieu, Tom. II

Ce contenu a été publié dans Vies des Saints par François-Xavier. Mettez-le en favori avec son permalien.

SOURCE : https://notredamedesanges.wordpress.com/2015/10/03/saint-denys-dalexandrie-fete-le-3-octobre/

Le Hiéromartyr Denys, évêque et pape d’Alexandrie, se convertit à l’âge mûr au Christianisme, grâce à la prédication du célèbre enseignant de l’Eglise, Origène, et devint son étudiant. Ensuite, il devint responsable de l’Ecole Catéchétique d’Alexandrie, puis en 247, évêque et pape d’Alexandrie.

Saint Denys œuvra énormément pour défendre l’Orthodoxie contre les hérésies, et il encouragea son troupeau à fermement confesser la Vraie Foi durant les temps de persécutions sous les empereurs Dèce (249-251) et Valérien (253-259).

Le saint évêque endura beaucoup de souffrances. Quand la peste frappa Alexandrie, le saint encouragea son troupeau à prendre soin des malades, sans faire de distinction entre Chrétiens et païens, et d’enterrer les morts. Au sujet du décès de ses enfants spirituels, il écrivait, « De la sorte, les meilleurs de nos frères ont quitté cette vie. Cette génération de morts, tombés par des actes de grande piété et foi ferme, ne sont rien de moins que des martyrs ». Saint Denys illumina son troupeau par ses actes d’amour et de charité. Il mourut en 264 ou 265.

SOURCE : http://www.dioceseserbe.org/fr/spc-saints/saint-denys-dalexandrie

Dionysius of Alexandria

 (Bishop from 247-8 to 264-5.)

Called "the Great" by Eusebius, St. Basil, and others, was undoubtedly, after St. Cyprian, the most eminent bishop of the third century. Like St. Cyprian he was less a great theologian than a great administrator. Like St. Cyprian his writings usually took the form of letters. Both saints were converts from paganism; both were engaged in the controversies as to the restoration of those who had lapsed in the Decian persecution, about Novatian, and with regard to the iteration of heretical baptism; both corresponded with the popes of their day. Yet it is curious that neither mentions the name of the other. A single letter of Dionysius has been preserved in Greek canon law. For the rest we are dependent on the many citations by Eusebius, and, for one phase, to the works of his great successor St. Athanasius.

Dionysius was an old man when he died, so that his birth will fall about 190, or earlier. He is said to have been of distinguished parentage. He became a Christian when still young. At a later period, when he was warned by a priest of the danger he ran in studying the books of heretics, a vision—so he informs us—assured him that he was capable of proving all things, and that this faculty had in fact been the cause of his conversion. He studied under Origen. The latter was banished by Demetrius about 231, and Heraclas took his place at the head of the catechetical school. On the death of Demetrius very soon afterwards, Heraclas became bishop, and Dionysius took the headship of the famous school. It is thought that he retained this office even when he himself had succeeded Heraclas as bishop. In the last year of Philip, 249, although the emperor himself was reported to be a Christian, a riot at Alexandria, roused by a popular prophet and poet, had all the effect of a severe persecution. It is described by Dionysius in a letter to Fabius of Antioch. The mob first seized an old man named Metras, beat him with clubs when he would not deny his faith, pierced his eyes and face with reeds, dragged him out of the city, and stoned him. Then a woman named Quinta, who would not sacrifice, was drawn along the rough pavement by the feet, dashed against millstones, scourged, and finally stoned in the same suburb. The houses of the faithful were plundered. Not one, so far as the bishop knew, apostatized. The aged virgin, Apollonia, after her teeth had been knocked out, sprang of her own accord into the fire prepared for her rather than utter blasphemies. Serapion had all his limbs broken, and was dashed down from the upper story of his own house. It was impossible for any Christian to go into the streets, even at night, for the mob was shouting that all who would not blaspheme should be burnt. The riot was stopped by the civil war, but the new Emperor Decius instituted a legal persecution in January, 250. St. Cyprian describes how at Carthage the Christians rushed to sacrifice, or at least to obtain false certificates of having done so. Similarly Dionysius tells us that at Alexandria many conformed through fear, others on account of official position, or persuaded by friends; some pale and trembling at their act, others boldly asserting that they had never been Christians. Some endured imprisonment for a time; others abjured only at the sight of tortures; others held out until the tortures conquered their resolution. But there were noble instances of constancy. Julian and Kronion were scourged through the city on camels, and then burnt to death. A soldier, Besas, who protected them from the insults of the people, was beheaded. Macar, a Libyan, was burnt alive. Epimachus and Alexander, after long imprisonment and many tortures, were also burnt, with four women. The virgin Ammomarion also was long tortured. The aged Mercuria and Dionysia, a mother of many children, suffered by the sword. Heron, Ater, and Isidore, Egyptians, after many tortures were given to the flames. A boy of fifteen, Dioscorus, who stood firm under torture, was dismissed by the judge for very shame. Nemesion was tortured and scourged, and then burnt between two robbers. A number of soldiers, and with them an old man named Ingenuus, made indignant signs to one who was on his trial and about to apostatize. When called to order they cried out that they were Christians with such boldness that the governor and his assessors were taken aback; they suffered a glorious martyrdom. Numbers were martyred in the cities and villages. A steward named Ischyrion was pierced through the stomach by his master with a large stake because he refused to sacrifice. Many fled, wandered in the desertsand the mountains, and were cut off by hunger, thirst, cold, sickness, robbers, or wild beasts. A bishop named Chæremon escaped with his súmbios (wife?) to the Arabian mountain, and was no more heard of. Many were carried off as slaves by the Saracens and some of these were later ransomed for large sums.

Some of the lapsed had been readmitted to Christian fellowship by the martyrs. Dionysius urged upon Fabius, Bishop of Antioch, who was inclined to join Novatian, that it was right to respect this judgment delivered by blessed martyrs "now seated with Christ, and sharers in His Kingdom and assessors in His judgment". He adds the story of an old man, Serapion, who after a long and blameless life had sacrificed, and could obtain absolution from no one. On his death-bed he sent his grandson to fetch a priest. The priest was ill, but he gave a particle of the Eucharist to the child, telling him to moisten it and place it in the old man's mouth. Serapion received it with joy, and immediately expired. Sabinus, the prefect, sent a frumentarius (detective) to search for Dionysius directly the decree was published; he looked everywhere but in Dionysius's own house, where the saint had quietly remained. On the fourth day he was inspired to depart, and he left at night, with his domestics and certain brethren. But it seems that he was soon made prisoner, for soldiers escorted the whole party to Taposiris in the Mareotis. A certain Timotheus, who had not been taken with the others, informed a passing countryman, who carried the news to a wedding-feast he was attending. All instantly rose up and rushed to release the bishop. The soldiers took to flight, leaving their prisoners on their uncushioned litters. Dionysius, believing his rescuers to be robbers, held out his clothes to them, retaining only his tunic. They urged him to rise and fly. He begged them to leave him, declaring that they might as well cut off his head at once, as the soldiers would shortly do so. He let himself down on the ground on his back; but they seized him by the hands and feet and dragged him away, carrying him out of the little town, and setting him on an ass without a saddle. With two companions, Gaius and Peter, he remained in a desert place in Libya until the persecution ceased in 251. The whole Christian world was then thrown into confusion by the news that Novatian claimed the Bishopric of Rome in opposition to Pope Cornelius. Dionysius at once took the side of the latter, and it was largely by his influence that the whole East, after much disturbance, was brought in a few months into unity and harmony. Novatian wrote to him for support. His curt reply has been preserved entire: Novatian can easily prove the truth of his protestation that he was consecrated against his will by voluntarily retiring; he ought to have suffered martyrdom rather than divide the Church of God; indeed it would have been a particularly glorious martyrdomon behalf of the whole Church (such is the importance attached by Dionysius to a schism at Rome); if he can even now persuade his party to make peace, the past will be forgotten; if not, let him save his own soul. St. Dionysius also wrote many letters on this question to Rome and to the East; some of these were treatises on penance. He took a somewhat milder view than Cyprian, for he gave greater weight to the "indulgences" granted by the martyrs, and refused forgiveness in the hour of death to none.

After the persecution the pestilence. Dionysius describes it more graphically than does St. Cyprian, and he reminds us of Thucydides and Defoe. The heathen thrust away their sick, fled from their own relatives, threw bodies half dead into the streets; yet they suffered more than the Christians, whose heroic acts of mercy are recounted by their bishop. Many priests, deacons, and persons of merit died from succouring others, and this death, writes Dionysius, was in no way inferior to martyrdom. The baptismal controversy spread from Africa throughout the East. Dionysius was far from teaching, like Cyprian, that baptism by a heretic rather befouls than cleanses; but he was impressed by the opinion of many bishops and some councils that repetition of such a baptism was necessary, and it appears that he besought Pope Stephen not to break off communion with the Churches of Asia on this account. He also wrote on the subject to Dionysius of Rome, who was not yet pope, and to a Roman named Philemon, both of whom had written to him. We know seven letters from him on the subject, two being addressed to Pope Sixtus II. In one of these he asks advice in the case of a man who had received baptism a long time before from heretics, and now declared that it had been improperly performed. Dionysius had refused to renew the sacrament after the man had so many years received the Holy Eucharist; he asks the pope's opinion. In this case it is clear that the difficulty was in the nature of the ceremonies used, not in the mere fact of their having been performed by heretics. We gather than Dionysius himself followed the Roman custom, either by the tradition of his Church, or else out of obedience to the decree of Stephen. In 253 Origen died; he had not been at Alexandria for many years. But Dionysius had not forgotten his old master, and wrote a letter in his praise to Theotecnus of Cæsarea.

An Egyptian bishop, Nepos, taught the Chiliastic error that there would be a reign of Christ upon earth for a thousand years, a period of corporal delights; he founded this doctrine upon the Apocalypse in a book entitled "Refutation of the Allegorizers". It was only after the death of Nepos that Dionysius found himself obliged to write two books "On the Promises" to counteract this error. He treats Nepos with great respect, but rejects his doctrine, as indeed the Church has since done, though it was taught by Papias, Justin, Irenæus, Victorinus of Pettau, and others. The diocese proper to Alexandria was still very large (though Heraclas is said to have instituted new bishoprics), and the Arsinoite nome formed a part of it. Here the error was very prevalent, and St. Dionysius went in person to the villages, called together the priests and teachers, and for three days instructed them, refuting the arguments they drew from the book of Nepos. He was much edified by the docile spirit and love of truth which he found. At length Korakion, who had introduced the book and the doctrine, declared himself convinced. The chief interest of the incident is not in the picture it gives of ancient Church life and of the wisdom and gentleness of the bishop, but in the remarkable disquisition, which Dionysius appends, on the authenticity of the Apocalypse. It is a very striking piece of "higher criticism", and for clearness and moderation, keenness and insight, is hardly to be surpassed. Some of the brethren, he tells us, in their zeal against Chiliastic error, repudiated the Apocalypse altogether, and took it chapter by chapter to ridicule it, attributing the authorship of it to Cerinthus (as we know the Roman Gaius did some years earlier). Dionysius treats it with reverence, and declares it to be full of hidden mysteries, and doubtless really by a man called John. (In a passage now lost, he showed that the book must be understood allegorically.) But he found it hard to believe that the writer could be the son of Zebedee, the author of the Gospel and of the Catholic Epistle, on account of the great contrast of character, style and "what is called working out". He shows that the one writer calls himself John, whereas the other only refers to himself by some periphrasis. He adds the famous remark, that "it is said that there are two tombs in Ephesus, both of which are called that of John". He demonstrates the close likeness between the Gospel and the Epistle, and points out the wholly different vocabulary of the Apocalypse; the latter is full of solecisms and barbarisms, while the former are in good Greek. This acute criticism was unfortunate, in that it was largely the cause of the frequent rejection of the Apocalypse in the Greek-speaking Churches, even as late as the Middle Ages. Dionysius's arguments appeared unanswerable to the liberal critics of the nineteenth century. Lately the swing of the pendulum has brought many, guided by Bousset, Harnack, and others, to be impressed rather by the undeniable points of contact between the Gospel and the Apocalypse, than by the differences of style (which can be explained by a different scribe and interpreter, since the author of both books was certainly a Jew), so that even Loisy admits that the opinion of the numerous and learned conservative scholars "no longer appears impossible". But it should be noted that the modern critics have added nothing to the judicious remarks of the third-century patriarch.

The Emperor Valerian, whose accession was in 253, did not persecute until 257. In that year St. Cyprian was banished to Curubis, and St. Dionysius to Kephro in the Mareotis, after being tried together with one priest and two deacons before Æmilianus, the prefect of Egypt. He himself relates the firm answers he made to the prefect, writing to defend himself against a certain Germanus, who had accused him of a disgraceful flight. Cyprian suffered in 258, but Dionysius was spared, and returned to Alexandria directly when toleration was decreed by Gallienus in 260. But not to peace, for in 261-2 the city was in a state of tumult little less dangerous than a persecution. The great thoroughfare which traversed the town was impassable. The bishop had to communicate with his flock by letter, as though they were in different countries. It was easier, he writes, to pass from East to West, than from Alexandria to Alexandria. Famine and pestilence raged anew. The inhabitants of what was still the second city of the world had decreased so that the males between fourteen and eighty were now scarcely so numerous as those between forty and seventy had been not many years before. A controversy arose in the latter years of Dionysius of which the half-Arian Eusebius has been careful to make no mention. All we know is from St. Athanasius. Some bishops of the Pentapolis of Upper Libya fell into Sabellianism and denied the distinctness of the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity. Dionysius wrote some four letters to condemn their error, and sent copies to Pope Sixtus II (257-8). But he himself fell, so far as words go, into the opposite error, for he said the Son is a poíema (something made) and distinct in substance, xénos kat’ oùsian, from the Father, even as is the husbandman from the vine, or a shipbuilder from a ship. These words were seized upon by the Arians of the fourth century as plain Arianism. But Athanasius defended Dionysius by telling the sequel of the history. Certain brethren of Alexandria, being offended at the words of their bishop, betook themselves to Rome to Pope St. Dionysius (259- 268), who wrote a letter, in which he declared that to teach that the Son was made or was a creature was an impiety equal, though contrary, to that of Sabellius. He also wrote to his namesake of Alexandria informing him of the accusation brought against him. The latter immediately composed books entitled "Refutation" and "Apology"; in these he explicitly declared that there never was a time when God was not Father, that Christ always was, being Word and Wisdom and Power, and coeternal, even as brightness is not posterior to the light from which it proceeds. He teaches the "Trinity in Unity and the Unity in Trinity"; he clearly implies the equality and eternal procession of the Holy Ghost. In these last points he is more explicit than St. Athanasius himself is elsewhere, while in the use of the word consubstantial, ‘omooúsios, he anticipates Nicæa, for he bitterly complains of the calumny that he had rejected the expression. But however he himself and his advocate Athanasius may attempt to explain away his earlier expressions, it is clear that he had been incorrect in thought as well as in words, and that he did not at first grasp the true doctrine with the necessary distinctness. The letter of the pope was evidently explicit and must have been the cause of the Alexandrian's clearer vision. The pope, as Athanasius points out, gave a formal condemnation of Arianism long before that heresy emerged. When we consider the vagueness and incorrectness in the fourth century of even the supporters of orthodoxy in the East, the decision of the Apostolic See will seem a marvellous testimony to the doctrine of the Fathers as to the unfailing faith of Rome.

We find Dionysius issuing yearly, like the later bishops of Alexandria, festal letters announcing the date of Easter and dealing with various matters. When the heresy of Paul of Samosata, Bishop of Antioch, began to trouble the East, Dionysius wrote to the Church of Antioch on the subject, as he was obliged to decline the invitation to attend a synod there, on the score of his age and infirmities. He died soon afterwards. St. Dionysius is in the Roman Martyrology on 17 Nov., but he is also intended, with the companions of his flight in the Decian persecution, by the mistaken notice on 3 Oct.: Dionysius, Faustus, Gaius, Peter, and Paul, Martyrs(!). The same error is found in Greek menologies.

Sources

The principal remains of Dionysius are the citations in EUSEBIUS, Church History VI-VII, a few fragments of the books On Natrure in IDEM, Præp. Evang., xiv, and ;the quotations in ATHANASIUS, De Sententiâ Dionysii, etc. A collection of these and other fragments is in GALLANDI, Bibl. Vett. Patrum, III XIV, reprinted in P.G., X. The fullest ed. is by SIMON DE MAGISTRIS, S. Dion. Al. Opp. omnia (Rome, 1796); also ROUTH, Reliquiæ Sacræ III-IV. Syriac and Armenian fragments in PITRA, Analecta Sacra, IV. A complete list of all the fragments is in HARNACK, Gesch. der altchr. Litt., I, 409-27, but his account of the passages from the Catena on Luke (probably from a letter to Origen, On Martyrdom) needs completing from SICKENBERGER, Die Lucaskatene des Niketas von Heracleia (Leipzig, 1902). For the life of Dionysius see TILLEMONT, IV; Acta SS., 3 Oct.; DITTRICH, Dionysius der Grosse, eine Monographie (Freiburg im Br., 1867); MORIZE, Denys d'Alexandrie (Paris, 1881). DOM MORIN tried unsuccessfully to identify the Canons of Hippolytus with DIONYSIUS" ’Epistóle diokonikè dià ‘Ippolútou (EUSEBIUS, Church History VI.45-46) in Revue Bénédictine (1900), XVII, 241. Also MERCATI, Note di letteratura bibl. et crist. ant.: Due supposte lettere di Dionigi Aless. (Rome, 1901). For chronology see HANACK, Chronol., I, 202, II, 57. A very good account, with full bibliography, is in BARDENHEWER, Gesch. der altkirchl. Litt., II. On the Chiliastic question see GRY, Le Millénarisme (Paris, 1904), 101.

Chapman, John. "Dionysius of Alexandria." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 5. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909. 7 Apr. 2019 <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05011a.htm>.

Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by WGKofron. With thanks to St. Mary's Church, Akron, Ohio.

Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. May 1, 1909. Remy Lafort, Censor. Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York.

Copyright © 2020 by Kevin Knight. Dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

SOURCE : http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05011a.htm

Despite a number of our members mistakenly believing that we are named after Dionysus, the Greek god of wine -- which probably says a lot about our drinking habits! -- we are in reality named after St. Dionysius of Alexandria, otherwise known as St. Dionysius the Great.

Born c. 190 in Alexandria, Dionysius studied under Origen at the catechetical school there. Origen is now recognised as one of the founding fathers of the ecclesiastical church, and Dionysius was one of his most exceptional students, undertaking studies in philosophy, theology and both pagan and Christian thought.1 Dionysius went on to become the head of the school in 231, following the banishment of his teacher Origen by the then Archbishop Demetrius.2 He was appointed Archbishop of Alexandria in 247 and held the position for nearly 20 years (4 of them in absentia) until his death in 265.

During the last year of the reign of Philip, 249, a major persecution was carried out in Alexandria by a pagan mob, and hundreds were assaulted, stoned, burned or cut down on account of their refusal to deny their faith. Although Dionysius managed to survive this persecution and the civil war that followed, the new Emperor Decius issued a decree for a legal persecution in January 250. The letters of Dionysius and Cyprian tell us of the outpouring of hatred within Alexandria and Carthage. Many Christians sacrificed their faith in fear, others attempted to obtain false documents affirming their sacrifice. Others who would not sacrifice their faith faced public ridicule and shame among their family and friends, and if they were found by the authorities, they faced brutal torture and all manner of martyrdoms. The vast majority of those who managed to flee the city would die within days, of exposure, hunger, thirst, or attacks by bandits or wild animals.

Dionysius himself was hunted by the prefect Sabinus, who had sent out an assassin to murder him on sight. Dionysius spent three days in hiding in his secluded home before departing on the fourth night of the Decius' decree with his servants and loyal members of his brethren. After a short brush with a group of soldiers, he managed to escape with two of his followers, and set up a residence in the Libyan desert until the end of the persecution the following year.

In March 251, Cornelius was elected to the papacy, and Novatian, the power-hungry Archdeacon of Rome, took exception. Within days he had announced that the Bishopric of Rome was in opposition to the new Pope, and he set himself up as a rival Pope in an effort to cause a schism within the Christian world. It was Dionysius' vocal and unwavering support of Pope Cornelius that defused the situation within a few months. When Novatian wrote Dionysius to ask for his support, he replied:

"Novatian can easily prove the truth of his protestation that he was consecrated against his will by voluntarily retiring; he ought to have suffered martyrdom rather than divide the Church of God; indeed it would have been a particularly glorious martyrdom on behalf of the whole Church; if he can even now persuade his party to make peace, the past will be forgotten; if not, let him save his own soul."

By the end of the year, Dionysius' letters indicated that all the churches in the East had been unified under Pope Cornelius, probably due largely to his own influence. Pope Cornelius ordered Novatian excommunicated and replaced him as Archdeacon of Rome with Stephen, a dissident of Novatian's clergy, who would go on to become Pope Stephen I in 254.

Between 252 and 257, Dionysius' life took several unexpected turns. In 252 an outbreak of plague ravaged Alexandria, and Dionysius, along with other major priests and deacons, took it upon themselves to assist the sick and dying. These same priests and deacons often perished in their efforts to give succour to the infected, but Dionysius remained, and lauded their efforts and deaths as being worthy of martyrdom. Dionysius spent much of the next few years authoring critical commentaries on Revelations, the last chapter of the Bible, following a claim by Nepos, an Egyptian bishop, that there would be a thousand-year reign of Christ on earth, and it would include earthly (read: sexual) delights for the faithful. Dionysius' two treatises "On the Promises" refutes this Chiliastic prophecy by way of allegorical analysis rather than literal, and his "higher criticism" is reputed as one of the greatest of its time, and has since challenged philosophical scholars to this day.

In 257, the Emperor Valerian authorised a new persecution, and took Dionysius to a show trial with a few of his loyal clergymen. Valerian ordered Dionysius and his followers banished to Kephro in the Mareotis region, where he spent three more years in exile until the persecution was lifted by Gallienus in 260. He was involved in a controversy later in his life, when in his efforts to reject Sabellianism he used the wrong expression to quantify the Trinity, thus giving rise to the Arianist doctrine.3 This caused him to write two further treatises, entitled "Refutation" and "Apology", wherein he laments his poor use of terminology and instead speaks of the "Trinity in Unity" and the "Unity in Trinity", clearly outlining the consubstantiality of the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity.

Dionysius is recorded in the Roman Martyrology as having died of natural causes on November 17th 265, but he may also be recognised on October 3rd (by way of a mistaken menology), being the day that he is recognised along with his compatriots who escaped the Decian persecution of 250.

Source: The Catholic Encyclopedia

Footnotes:

(1) A brief summary of Origen and his works can be found at: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11306b.htm

(2) Heraclas became head of the school for a short time, until the death of Demetrius shortly afterwards, at which time Heraclas became Archbishop, and Dionysius took over the school.

(3) Sabellianism is the notion that the beings of the Trinity (other than God) are not distinct, thus the Trinity is not a valid function of the "true faith". Dionysius responded by saying that the Son is "something made" and "distinct in substance" from the Father, "even as is the husbandman from the vine, or the shipbuilder from the ship". Arianist scholars captalised on this, interpreting Dionysius to mean that the Son is made by the Father and therefore lesser than Him, thus also causing the downfall of the concept of the Trinity.

SOURCE : http://stdionysius.sca.org.nz/dionysius.html

St. Dionysius, Archbishop of Alexandria, Confessor

ST. BASIL and other Greeks usually honour this holy prelate with the epithet of The Great: and he is called by St. Athanasius, the Doctor of the Catholic Church. His parents were rich and of high rank in the world: according to the patriarchal chronicle of Alexandria, published by Abraham Echellensis, he was by birth a Sabaite, of one of the principal families of that country in Arabia Felix. Alexandria, which seems to have been the place of his education, was then the centre of the sciences, and Dionysius, whilst yet a heathen, ran through the whole circle of profane learning, and professed oratory. 1 Falling, at length, upon the epistles of St. Paul, he found in them charms which he had not met with in the writings of the philosophers, and opening his heart to the truth, he renounced the errors of idolatry. He assures us, that he was converted to the faith by a vision and a voice which spoke to him, and by diligent reading, and an impartial examination. At the same time that his understanding was opened to the heavenly light, he turned his heart so perfectly to God, that he trampled under his feet all the glory of the world, and the applause which his merit, quality, senatorial dignity, and prefectures, drew upon him from the most honourable persons. He became an humble scholar in the catechetical school of Origen, and made such progress that he was ordained priest; and when Heraclas was made bishop, the care of that school was commited by him to our saint, in 221, who, upon his death, in the beginning of the year 247, the fourth of the Emperor Philip, was chosen archbishop. Though the reign of this prince was favourable to the Christians, soon after the exaltation of St. Dionysius, the populace, stirred up by a certain heathen false prophet, at Alexandria, raised a tumultuary persecution: on which, see the life of St. Appollonia, February the 9th. When Decius had murdered his master, Philip, and usurped the empire, in 249, his violent persecution put arms into the hands of the enraged enemies of the Christian name. Many of all ages, ranks, and professions, were put to the most exquisite tortures: multitudes fled into the mountains and woods, where many perished by hunger, cold, wild beasts, or thieves, and several falling into the hands of the Saracens, were reduced to a state of slavery worse than death itself; but the most dreadful affliction to the holy bishop was the apostacy of several, who, in this terrible time of trial, denied their faith. The scandal, indeed, which these gave, was, in some measure, repaired by the invincible constancy wherewith others of both sexes, and of every age and condition, maintained their faith under the sharpest torments, and most cruel deaths, and by the wonderful conversion of several enemies; for, some who scoffed and insulted the martyrs, were so powerfully overcome by the example of their meekness, and courage in their sufferings, that they suddenly declared themselves Christians, and ready to undergo all torments for that profession. Two did this under the judge’s eyes, with such undaunted resolution that he was strangely surprised, and seized with trembling; and sentence being passed upon them, they went out of the court rejoicing to give so glorious a testimony to Christ. 2

  Decius’s sanguinary edict reached Alexandria in the beginning of 250. Dionysius was particularly active in arming and preparing the soldiers of Christ for the combat, and though Sabinus, the prefect of Egypt, despatched a guard in quest of him, he escaped by lying four days concealed in his house; then left it by divine direction, as he assures us, with a view of seeking a safe retreat; but, with several persons who accompanied him, fell into the hands of the persecutors, who, by the prefect’s orders, conducted them to a small town called Taposiris, in the province of Mareotis, about three leagues from Alexandria. A considerable body of peasants taking arms and making their appearance there in defence of the bishop, the guards were alarmed and fled, leaving the prisoners behind them. The bishop, who was every moment waiting for death, was carried off by them by main force, and set at liberty to choose a safe retreat. St. Dionysius, attended by Peter, Caius, Paul, and Faustus, made his way to a desert in the province of Marmarica, in Lybia, where he lay concealed with Peter and Caius, two priests, till the end of the persecution in the middle of the year 251; but, during that interval, often sent priests with directions and letters for the comfort of his flock, especially of those who suffered for the faith. Our saint was returned to Alexandria when he was informed of the schism formed by Novatian against Pope Cornelius. The antipope sent him notice of his election in form. St. Dionysius, in his answer, said to him: “You ought rather to have suffered all things, than have raised a schism in the church. To die in defence of its unity would be as glorious as laying down one’s life rather than to sacrifice to idols; and, in my opinion, more glorious; because, here the safety of the whole church is consulted. If you bring your brethren to union, this will overbalance your fault, which will be forgot, and you will receive commendation. If you cannot gain others, at least save your own soul.” Our saint wrote thrice to the clergy and to those confessors who supported the schism at Rome, and had the satisfaction of seeing the confessors abandon it before the end of the year. To oppose the heresy of Novatian, who denied in the church the power of remitting certain sins, he ordered that the communion should be refused to no one who asked it at the hour of death. Fabian, bishop of Antioch, seemed inclined to favour the rigorism of Novatian towards the lapsed. The great Dionysius wrote to him several letters against that principle; in one of which, he relates that an old man called Serapion, who had offered sacrifice, and had therefore been refused the communion, and detained among the penitents, in his last sickness lay senseless and speechless three days: then, coming to himself, cried out: “Why am I detained here? I beg to be delivered.” And he sent his little grandson to the priest, who, being sick, and not able to come, sent the holy eucharist by the child, directing him to moisten it, and give it to his grandfather: for, during the primitive persecutions, the blessed sacrament was allowed to be so carried and received in domestic communion. When the child entered the room, Serapion cried out: “The priest cannot come: do as he ordered you, and dismiss me immediately.” The old man, expires with a gentle sigh, as soon as he had swallowed it. St. Dionysius observes that his life was miraculously preserved that he might receive the holy communion. In 250, a pestilence began to rage, and made great havoc for several years. By St. Dionysius’s direction, many, in Egypt, died martyrs of charity on that occasion. 3

  The opinion that Christ will reign on earth with his elect a thousand years before the day of judgment, was an error founded chiefly on certain mistaken passages of the Apocalypse or Revelations of St. John. Those who, with Cerinthus, understood this of a reign in sensual pleasures, were always deemed abominable heretics. But some Catholics admitted it in spiritual delights; which opinion was for some time tolerated in the church. Nepos, a zealous and learned bishop of Arsinoe, who died in the communion of the church, propagated this mistaken notion in all that part of Egypt, and wrote in defence of it two books entitled, On the Promises. This work St. Dionysius confuted by two books against the Millenarian heresy. He also took a journey to Arsinoe, and held a public conference with Coracion, the chief of the Millenarians, in which he confuted them with no less mildness and charity, than strength of reasoning, and with such advantage, that Coracion publicly revoked that mistaken interpretation, which was exploded out of the whole country, and was unanimously condemned upon examination into the sound constant tradition, which could not be obscured by the disagreement of some few persons or particular churches. When Pope Stephen threatened to excommunicate the Africans for rebaptizing all heretics, St. Dionysius prevailed with him by letters to suspend the execution. St. Jerom was misinformed when he attributed, the opinion of the Africans to St. Dionysius, who, as St. Basil testifies, 4 admitted even the baptism of the Pepuzeni, which was rejected in Asia, because the heretics (who, as it were, by a constant rule, differ from themselves in different ages and countries) in certain places corrupted the essential form of baptism, which the same sect retained in others. 5 The persecution being renewed by Valerian, in 257, Emilian, prefect of Egypt, caused St. Dionysius, with Maximus a priest, Faustus, Eusebius, and Queremon, deacons, and one Marcellus, a Roman, to be apprehended and brought before him, and pressed them to sacrifice to the gods, the conservators of the empire. St. Dionysius replied: “All men adore not the same deities. We adore one only God, the Creator of all things, who hath bestowed the empire on Valerian and Gallien. We offer up prayers to him without ceasing for the peace and prosperity of their reign.” The prefect attempted in vain to persuade them to adore the Roman deities with their own God: and at length sent them into banishment to Kephro, in Lybia. And he forbade the Christians to hold assemblies, or go to the places called Cemeteries; that is, the tombs of martyrs. St. Dionysius converted the pagan savages of the country to which he was sent; but, by an order of the prefect, the saint and his companions were afterwards removed to Collouthion near Mareotis, now called the Lake of Alexandria. The neighbourhood of that city afforded him in this place an opportunity of receiving from and sending thither frequent messages and directions. His exile continued two years, and during it he wrote two paschal letters.

  The captivity of Valerian, who was taken prisoner by the Persians in 260, and the peace which Gallien granted to the church by public edicts, restored St. Dionysius to his flock. But the region of this lower world is stormy, and one wave perpetually presses upon the neck of another. The prefect, Emilian, seized upon the public store-houses of Alexandria, which were the granary of Rome, and assumed the imperial dignity. This revolt filled the city and country with the calamities which attend on civil wars, till Emilian was defeated by Theodotus, whom Gallien sent against him; and, being taken, he was sent to Rome, and strangled. A trifling incident gave occasion to another sedition in that populous city. A servant to one of the civil magistrates happening to tell a soldier that his shoes were finer than another man’s, he was taken up, and beaten for this affront. The whole town ran to arms to revenge this quarrel, the streets were filled with dead bodies, and the waters ran with blood. The peaceable demeanour of the Christians could not screen them from violences, as St. Dionysius complains; and, for a long time, a man could neither keep at home nor stir out of doors without danger. The pestilence still continued its havoc, and whilst the Christians attended the sick, with inexpressible pains and charity, the heathens threw the putrid carcasses into the highways, and often put their dying friends out of doors, and left them to perish in the streets, hoping, by their caution, to avoid the contagion, to which the apprehension which seized their imagination, exposed them the more. The heresies, which at that time disturbed the church, also exercised the zeal of our holy pastor. Sabellius of Ptolemais, in Lybia, a disciple of Noetus of Smyrna, renewed the heresy of Praxeas, denying the real distinction of the three Divine Persons. St. Dionysius, to whom belonged the care of the churches of Pentapolis, sent thither to admonish the authors of this error to forsake it; but they defended their impious doctrine with greater impudence. He therefore condemned them in a council at Alexandria, in 261. Before this, by a letter, of which Eusebius has preserved a fragment, he had given information of the blasphemies of Sabellius to St. Sixtus II., bishop of Rome, who sat from 257 to 259. 6 In his letter to Euphranor and Ammonius, against this heresy, he insists much on the proofs of Christ’s human nature, to show that the Father is not the Son. Some persons took offence at his doctrine, and their slanders were carried to St. Dionysius, bishop of Rome, who had succeeded St. Sixtus. That pope wrote to our saint upon the subject, who cleared himself by showing that when he called Christ a creature, and differing in substance from the Father, he spoke only of his human nature. This was the subject of his Apology to Dionysius, bishop of Rome, in which he demonstrated that the Son, as to his divine nature, is of the same substance with the Father, as is clearly shown by St. Athanasius, in his book On the Opinion of Dionysius. In the same work our saint established the divinity of the Holy Ghost, as St. Basil testifies by quotations extracted from it in his book on that subject.

  The loss of our saint’s works is extremely regretted; for of them nothing has reached us except some fragments quoted by others, and his canonical epistle to Basilides, which has a place among the canons of the church. In the first canon he mentions a difficulty then often propounded, at what hour on Easter morning the fast of Lent might be lawfully broken; and says, that though midnight was looked upon to close the fast (which is long since certain as to the church precept) yet this being not a natural or usual hour for eating, he thought it could not be excused from intemperance, to eat then, and advised the morning to be waited for, though all Christians spent that whole night in watching at their devotions. He speaks of the fasts of superposition observed in the last week of Lent, and says, that some fasted the whole six days before Easter, without taking any nourishment; others five, three, two, or one day, according to their strength and devotion, this not being a matter of precept as to the superposition of several days. He inculcates, that great purity, both of mind and body, is required in all who approached the holy table, and receive the body and blood of our Lord. 7 St. Dionysius of Alexandria, a little before his death, defended the divinity of Jesus Christ against Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch, a man infamous both for his abominable heresies, and also for his intolerable haughtiness, vanity, avarice, extortions, and other crimes. St. Dionysius, being invited to the synod that was held at Antioch against this heretic in 264, and, not being able to go thither, by reason of his old age and infirmities, wrote several letters to the church of Antioch, wherein he refuted the heresiarch’s errors, but would not condescend to salute him. 8 Nevertheless, the crafty fox dissembled his sentiments, and palliated his disorders in this council, renouncing what he could not conceal, so that he continued some time longer in his station. 9 Towards the end of the year 265, soon after the Antiochian synod was over, St. Dionysius died at Alexandria, after he had governed that church with great wisdom and sanctity about seventeen years. 10 His memory, says St. Epiphanius, was preserved at Alexandria by a church dedicated in his honour, but much more by his incomparable virtues and excellent writings. See Eus. Hist. l. 6. and 7. St. Jerom, in Catal. &c. Also Tillemont, t. 4. Cave, Prim. Fathers, t. 2. Ceillier, t. 3. p. 241. Corn, Bie the Bollandist, ad 3 Oct. t. 2. p. 8.

Note 1. S. Maximus, M. in c. 5, l. de Hierarchia cœlesti. [back]

Note 2. See S. Dionysius, ep. ad Fabium Antioch. ap. Eus. l. 6, c. 41, 42. [back]

Note 3. See Feb. vol. 2, pp. 239, 240, and Eus. l. 7, c. 22. [back]

Note 4. S. Basil, ep. Can. 1. [back]

Note 5. S. Dionysius’s orthodox sentiments are also proved from the fragments of his letters in Eusebius, (l. 7, c. 9.) See Fleury, l. 7, c. 35, and Bie the Bollandist, § 9, p. 39, t. 18, Oct. 3, who clears him of all suspicion of Arianism. ib. § 17, 18, 19, 20. [back]

Note 6. Eus. l. 7, c. 9. [back]

Note 7. See Ep. Canon. S. Dion. Alex. inter Canones Eccl. Græc. per Beveregium. [back]

Note 8. Eus. l. 7, c. 27, 29. [back]

Note 9. St. Dionysius was certainly orthodox on the Trinity. See Bie, § 17, p. 56. Nor was he accused of any error by St. Basil. If he allows Christ not to be consubstantial to the Father, he speaks evidently of his human nature. See Bull, Witasse, Tournely, Maran, &c. [back]

Note 10. Bie shows that he never was married, and that boys [Greek], mean only young attendants, scholars or clergy. See Eus. Hist. l. 7, c. 26, Bie, § 3, p. 17. [back]

Rev. Alban Butler (1711–73).  Volume XI: November. The Lives of the Saints.  1866.

SOURCE : https://www.bartleby.com/210/11/172.html

Saint Dionysius of Alexandria

 

Also known as

Dionysius the Great

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8 April

17 November on some calendars

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He studied under Origen, and eventually became the head of the catechetical school of Alexandria, Egypt. Archbishopof Alexandria. In 250 during the persecutions of Decius, Dionysius tried to flee the city, but was caught and imprisoned. He was rescued by Christians and hid in the Libyan desert until 251. During the Novatian schism, Dionysius supported Pope Cornelius, and helped unify the East. Exiled during the persecution of Valerian in 257 to the desert of Mareotis; he returned to Alexandria when toleration was decreed by Gallienus in 260. Dionysius dealt leniently with the Christians who had lapsed during the persecutions. He wrote a noted commentary on Revelations. Greek Father of the Church.

 

Born

c.190 in Alexandria, Egypt

Died

265 of natural causes

Canonized

Pre-Congregation

SOURCE : https://catholicsaints.info/saint-dionysius-of-alexandria/

Saint Dionysius of Alexandria, by Charles Lett Feltoe

Introduction

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” (kanonikos). 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, 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

The references to his family and early years are extremely scanty and vague. In the Chronicon Orientale, 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 (Aiguptioi); 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, where he refers to the “losses of dignities” which he has suffered for the Faith.

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

The Chronicon Orientale assigns the reading of Saint 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, 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?

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 peri Phuseos to one Timotheus ho pais, and we read of hoi paides (of whom Timotheus was one) as accompanying him in his flight. 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. (Most of those who read this will be aware that pais (Latin puer) can be used in various senses, like our “boy” and French garçon.)

He becomes Head of the Catechetical School

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 peri Phuseos, 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

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. 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, 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

Decius’s reversal of his predecessor’s policy towards the Christians was probably due to reasons of state and expediency rather than, as Eusebius implies, to mere spite and hatred of Philip and all his ways. Anyhow, the severity of the Decian persecution is undoubted, and it fell with great force upon the Church at Alexandria. The Prefect of Egypt, Sabinus, lost no time in attacking Dionysius and his followers. Many endured tortures or death, or both. Dionysius himself, after waiting four days, fled and was sought for by a secret service messenger sent by Sabinus. A brief search was sufficient to recover him, and he was carried off with four of his companions to Taposiris. But through a strange interposition of Providence he was rescued by a wedding party of rustic revellers and removed to a place of safety in the Libyan Desert, where he appears to have been left unmolested, with two of his four companions, till the persecution ceased and he was able to return to the city. In after days Dionysius’s action in fleeing on this occasion was violently attacked by a certain Bishop Germanus, who was perhaps one of his suffragans. Germanus boasted of his own much braver conduct under persecution. Dionysius in his reply maintains that it was not of his own will nor yet without divine intimation that he had fled, and that he had suffered far more than his critic for the Faith. Decius’s rule was brought to a calamitous end in 251, but Gallus, who succeeded him, continued his treatment of the Christians for another two years, when he, too, suffered an untimely fate.

For the next four years the Church of Alexandria enjoyed comparative rest and peace. In 253 Æmilianus the Governor of Pannonia and Moesia, who had in that spring wrested the imperial power from Gallus, was in his turn, after four months’ rule, defeated by Valerian and his son Gallienus, and slain by the soldiery. The new Emperors (father and son) left the Christians alone during the first four years of their reign – a somewhat surprising fact, when it is considered that Valerian had been specially chosen to fill the office of “Censor,” which Decius had revived. It may in some measure have been due to what Archbishop Benson calls his “languid temperament” as well as to his son’s connexions with the Christians through his wife Cornelia Salonina.

His Action about Heretical Baptism

During this interval of peace, but chiefly towards the end of it, Dionysius took part in that controversy about heretical baptism to which the letters belong. Up till now various parts of Christendom had followed various customs on this matter without much disputing. In Asia Minor and in Africa baptism by heretics was not recognized, while in the West baptism with water in the name of the Trinity or of Christ was held valid by whomsoever performed. Before the middle of the third century, however, the difference of practice gradually became more and more a matter of controversy. In or about A.D. 230 two synods were held one after the other at Iconium and at Synnada, which confirmed the opinion that heretical baptism was invalid: and some twenty-five years later on Cyprian of Carthage convened several synods in North Africa, which arrived at the same conclusion. Thereupon a violent quarrel arose between Cyprian and Stephen the Bishop of Rome; this became, perhaps, all the keener, because of the former alliance and co-operation between Cyprian and Stephen’s predecessor, Cornelius, in combating the Novatianist schism, which had eventually led also to heresy over the restoration of those who had lapsed under persecution. Severe language was now used on both sides, and other leading Churchmen of the day were naturally drawn into the discussion: among them our Dionysius, who – after the first, at all events – with characteristic sagacity steered a middle course and advised that the older spirit of toleration should be maintained, the circumstances of different churches requiring different methods. Fragments of five letters on this subject have come down to us, all addressed to the Church of Rome or rather to representative members of that Church, the first of them probably written in 254 when the Novatianist schism was subsiding, and the others belonging to the year 257.

Under the Persecution of Valerian

Suddenly, in the summer of that year, the Church was startled by the issue of an edict which revived the reign of terror and threw her into a state of persecution which lasted for more than three years. This unexpected change of treatment is attributed by Dionysius to the influence of Macrianus, who at one time held the office of Rationalis (Treasurer or Accountant-General) to the Emperor. This man was apparently a cripple in body, but mentally and otherwise a person of considerable ability and force of character: but he seems to have associated himself in some way with the soothsayers of Egypt, and to have conceived a violent hatred against the Christians. Quite early in the proceedings which were instituted against them at Alexandria in consequence of the edict, Dionysius, with several of his clergy, was brought before Æmilianus the Prefect, and after examination – chiefly as to his loyalty to the Emperors, which his refusal to pay them divine honours rendered doubtful – was banished first to a place called Cephro (probably not far from Taposiris, where he had been sent before), and then somewhere on the high road in the district called Colluthion. Dionysius’s own account of the circumstances which led to and attended this second exile is given on an account which is valuable, among other reasons, because it is largely drawn from the official memoranda of the Prefect’s court, and because it shows how both sides did their ineffectual best to understand each other’s position.

Restoration of Peace

The persecution lasted till the autumn of 260, and was then, on the disappearance of Valerian, stayed by an edict of Peace issued by his son Gallienus, who was now left alone upon the throne. The Greek version, which Eusebius gives us, is apparently not that of the actual edict, but of the Emperor’s letter or rescript which applied it to Egypt. It is addressed to Dionysius and other bishops, and runs as follows: “I have ordained that the benefit of my concession be enforced throughout the world, to the effect that men should withdraw from (i. e. not interfere with) your places of worship. And accordingly ye, too, may use the terms of my rescript, so that none may interfere with you. And this, which may with authority be carried out by you, has already been granted by me some time ago. And accordingly Aurelius Quirinius, who is in charge of the Exchequer, shall preserve this form now given by me.” Instructions were also issued permitting the Christians to have free access to their cemeteries – a privilege which was always much prized.

His Return to Alexandria

It is practically certain that Dionysius returned to Alexandria as soon as Gallienus’s edict came into operation there. But almost immediately fresh disturbances were felt in the city, followed by one of those frequent outbreaks of pestilence to which the East was always liable, and these hindered for a time his work of bringing the brethren together again. The disturbances are with good reason thought to have been those connected with the attempt of Macrianus to overturn the power of Gallienus in Egypt, though that country was so often the scene of tumults and civil wars for the next twelve years and more that it is almost impossible to identify any particular disturbances with certainty during this period.

The Troubles Connected with his Protest against Sabellianism

For another five years Dionysius was spared to administer his charge and to benefit the Church at large with his prudent counsels. But, though attacks upon himself never seem to have troubled him very much, he had still to endure one such attack which probably grieved him more than all the rest, and the after results of which lingered on till the days of Athanasius and Basil in the next century. This was in connexion with the Sabellian controversy, especially that phase of it which had recently arisen in the Libyan Pentapolis (on the north-west coast of Cyrenaica). Sabellius was a native of the district, and his heresy consisted in laying too much stress on the unity of the Godhead and in so hopelessly confounding the Three Persons in the Trinity as to imply that the Person of the Father was incarnate in Christ. It is in 257 that we first find Dionysius, in a letter to Xystus II, calling the attention of the Bishop of Rome to these views, by which time Sabellius was himself probably already dead. From what he says there, it appears as if Dionysius was unaware that these views were not of quite recent origin and were already rather prevalent in both East and West, whilst his words seem also to imply that this later phase of Sabellianism endangered the dignity of the Third Person as well as of the First and Second. In Libya the heresy gained such a hold upon the Church that it even infected certain of the Bishops, and the Son of God was no longer preached. Dionysius, therefore, feeling his responsibility for the churches under his care, became active in trying to eradicate the evil. Among a number of letters which he wrote on the subject, there was one (about the year 260) in which he made use of certain expressions and illustrations with regard to the Son of God, which were seized hold of by some members of the Church either at Alexandria or in the Pentapolis as heretical. This letter was apparently one of the later letters of the series, when his earlier overtures had failed to produce the effect he desired.

Dionysius’s critics laid a formal complaint against him before his namesake (Dionysius), who had by now succeeded the martyred Xystus II as Bishop of Rome; they accused him of having fallen into five errors himself, while correcting the false views of the Sabellians.

They were as follows, as we gather them from Athan., de sent. Dion.: –

(1) Separating the Father and the Son.

(2) Denying the eternity of the Son.

(3) Naming the Father without the Son and the Son without the Father.

(4) Virtually rejecting the term homoousios (of one substance) as descriptive of the Son.

(5) Speaking of the Son as a creature of the Father and using misleading illustrations of their relation to One Another.

One or two of these illustrations which were objected to will be found in the extract translated on, and they are sufficient to give some idea of the rest. It may, however, be acknowledged that neither Dionysius himself in his original statements and in his attempts to explain them, nor Athanasius, who, when Arius afterwards appealed to Dionysius in support of his opinions, put forward an elaborate defence of him, was altogether happy or successful.

Upon receiving the complaint mentioned, the Bishop of Rome appears to have convened a synod, which condemned the expressions complained of, and a letter was addressed by him on the modes of correcting the heresy to the Church of Alexandria. From motives of delicacy he made no actual mention of his Alexandrian brother-bishop in this letter, while criticizing his views, though he wrote to him privately asking for an explanation. A considerable portion of the public letter has been preserved for us by Athanasius, but it is not included in this volume, nor is it necessary to particularize his treatment of the question or to say more than this, that, though the Roman Bishop wrote quite good Greek and gives no impression that he felt hampered by it in expressing his meaning, yet he does naturally exhibit distinct traces of Western modes of thought as opposed to Eastern, and is not always quite fair in his representation and interpretation of what Dionysius had said.

Dionysius’s answer to his Roman brother was embodied in the treatise called Refutation and Defence (Elenchos kai Apologia), some extracts from which (as given by Athanasius) will be found on.

The following is an indication of Dionysius’s line of defence against the five points raised against him, other matters which arose more particularly between him and his namesake of Rome being passed over.

(1) As to the charge of separating the Three Persons in the Trinity, he distinctly denies it: all the language he employs and the very names he gives imply the opposite: “Father” must involve “Son” and “Son” “Father”: “Holy Spirit” at once suggests His Source and the Channel.

(2) As to the eternity of the Son, he is equally emphatic. God was always the Father and therefore Christ was always the Son, just as, if the sun were eternal, the daylight would also be eternal.

(3) The charge of omitting the Son in speaking of the Father and vice versa is refuted by what is said under (1): the one name involves the other.

(4) Dionysius’s rejection or non-employment of the term homoousios is less easily disposed of. He practically acknowledges that, as it is not a Scriptural word, he had not used it, but at the same time that the figures he employed suggested a similar relationship, e. g. the figure of parent and child who are of one family (homogeneis) or seed, root and plant which are of one kind (homophue), and again source and stream, and in another place the word in the heart and the mind springing forth by the tongue: but for the unsatisfactoriness of this defence the reader should consult Bethune-Baker, who points out that Dionysius had not grasped the Western tradition of one substantia (ousia) of Godhead existing in three Persons.

(5) But the most serious misunderstanding naturally arose from Dionysius speaking of the Son as poiema (creature), and illustrating the word by the gardener with his vine and the shipwright with his boat. His defence is that though he had undoubtedly used such rather unsuitable figures somewhat casually, he had immediately adduced several others more suitable and apposite (such as those mentioned under (4) above). And he complains that not only here, but throughout, his accusers did not take his utterances as a whole, but slashed his writings about and made what sense of them they liked, not sincerely, but with evil intent. He tries further to explain that in his context poiein (make) was equivalent to gennan (beget), as of a Father, not a Creator, which he maintains is legitimate, but the defence is not very convincing all the same.

So far as we can now judge, however, his arguments seem to have satisfied his critics at the time, and were certainly held in high repute by the ancient Churches, for they are quoted or referred to not only by Athanasius, as has been stated, but also by Eusebius, by Basil of Cæsarea (who is, however, much more temperate in his support), and by Jerome and Rufinus.

Dionysius’s Last Days

It is evident that, in spite of this controversy, his great reputation in the eyes of the Church was maintained to the end: for when the Council of Antioch was being summoned to deal with the troubles connected with the heresies of Paul of Samosata, who held views somewhat similar to those of Sabellius, Dionysius was specially invited to attend. As was said above, he excused himself from attendance on the ground of old age and infirmity, but he sent a letter in reply to the invitation which contained his views on the matter, and these were unfavourable to the heretic. In 265, before the Council had finished its sessions, he passed to his well-earned rest.

Dionysius as Author

From what has already been said, it will be gathered that Dionysius was a person of remarkable versatility, and at the same time unusually free from those snares of the versatile man, shallowness and inaccuracy. The critical remarks on the Revelation of S. John the Divine from his treatise On the Promises (peri Epangelion), which are given in full (from Eusebius) have received the most respectful consideration from such authorities as Bishop Westcott and Dr. Swete and are well worth reading, while some of the expositions of Biblical passages attributed to him are probably genuine and by no means destitute of merit, though none of them are printed in this volume.

As Christian Philosopher

The long extracts which remain from his book On Nature (peri Phuseos), directed against the Epicureans, show him to have possessed on the whole a clear grasp of their tenets, together with much genuine humour and entire absence of bitterness of spirit in criticizing them.

The extracts given by Eusebius appear to be fairly continuous throughout: they deal (1) with the atomistic portion of the Epicurean philosophy, and (2) with the more strictly “theological” portion of it, the references to the hedonistic doctrine being only slight and passing.

Dionysius begins by remarking that of the various hypotheses which have been started as to the origin of the universe, one of the least satisfactory is that of Epicurus, viz. that it is the result of a chance concourse of an infinite number of atoms, as they rush through space.

He then proceeds to show by a series of illustrations taken from human workmanship that mere chance could never produce the wonderful results that we see all around us. So, too, from the study of the heavens the same inference must be drawn.

His next point appears to be that the difference in durability, which Epicurus postulates for the various bodies produced by atoms, goes to upset his theory. If some products (e. g. the gods) are eternal and some are short-lived, what determines the difference? Some of the senseless atoms themselves must be gifted with powers of directing, arranging and ruling. But if it is mere chance, then Epicurus asks us, who study the order and the phenomena of earth and heaven, to believe the impossible.

The same conclusion is arrived at by the study of man, whose mere body is a machine so marvellous that some have emerged from the study of it with a belief that Phusis herself is a deity. The higher powers, too, of man, his mind and reason and skill, all point in the opposite direction to Epicurus’s solution of the problem. It cannot, surely, be the atoms rather than the Muses which are responsible for the arts and sciences.

The half-humorous allusion to these heaven-born personages of heathen mythology leads Dionysius to attack the Epicurean theory of the gods. According to Epicurus, the gods in no way concern themselves with mundane matters, but spend a serene existence without labour or exertion of any kind. But such an existence, says Dionysius, is so repugnant to the very idea and instinct of man that it must be absolutely false with regard to divine beings.

At this point occurs a short passage in which the inconsistency of Democritus, from whom Epicurus had confessedly borrowed his physics, mutatis mutandis, is criticized, though it has only a general bearing upon the line of argument. Democritus, he says, who professed that he would have given the world in exchange for the discovery of one good cause (aitiologia), yet in putting forward his ideas of Chance as a cause could not have been more absurd: he sets up Tuche as the sovereign cause of the Universe, and yet banishes her as a power from the life of men. The truth is that, while practical men and even philosophers find their highest pleasure in benefiting others, by this theory the gods are to be kept from any share in such pleasure.

One other inconsistency in the Epicurean writings Dionysius next deals with, and that is Epicurus’s own constant use of oaths and adjurations, in which the names of those very beings occur whose influence upon men’s affairs he so depreciates. This is, in Dionysius’s opinion, due to his fear of being put to death by the state for atheism, as Socrates had been: though he is probably doing Epicurus a wrong.

The extracts end with a repetition of the appeal to the wonders of the sky and of the earth as a conclusive contradiction of Epicurus’s views.

General Characteristics of his Writings

The letter to Basilides on several points of ecclesiastical order is a model of what such episcopal utterances should be: it definitely states which is the highest and best course, but leaves the decision to the individual conscience. But it is to the general correspondence that the bulk of English readers will probably turn, and that deals with a large variety of subjects: in some cases theological matters like Novatianism and the baptism of heretics are discussed; in others there are descriptions of the martyrdoms of his time at Alexandria and his own personal experiences under persecution, all told with a vividness and a sobriety eminently characteristic of the man: others are addressed to persons or districts in his province, especially at Eastertide, treating of matters of local and temporary importance, while one or two incidents which he records are of much value as illustrating church customs and manners of the period.

In his controversy with the Sabellians, as we have already remarked, some of the expressions and figures employed were insufficiently guarded or explained and so laid Dionysius open to criticism: but we must remember how much more easy it is for us, who have the benefit of subsequent history and experience, to see this and to correct it, than it was for him and for his contemporaries to grope their way, as they slowly but surely did, under the Divine guidance to a fuller knowledge and a more accurate statement of the truth.

It is further to be noticed how very seldom, if ever, Dionysius offends against the principles of good taste either when attacking opponents, or when describing horrors, or when dealing with the mysteries of the Faith. In controversy he always displays an admirable moderation and sweetness of tone, which is the more remarkable because his convictions were strong and definite. This is especially to be observed in his treatment of Novatianus the intruder, in his criticism of the deceased Nepos of Arsenoe, and to a less extent in his defence of himself against the charges of Germanus. Even when he has to speak of one whom he believes to have done him wrong, like the Prefect Æmilianus, or of one whom his soul abhors like Macrianus, his language is mild in comparison with that of many in similar circumstances. So, too, when he takes upon himself to describe the tortures and deaths of the martyrs, or the ravages of pestilence, he indulges in but few ghastly or revolting details, though his narrative is always lively and thrilling. And once more when he deals with such a subject as the Eternal Sonship of our Lord, or, if the passage (not here given) be authentic, His Death and Passion, the same good taste and restraint of language is to be observed.

Dionysius’s literary style is excellent for the age in which he lived, and so far confirms the truth of the statement that he had been a master of rhetoric before his conversion. He gives evidence of having read widely and to good purpose both in classical and in religious literature. As to the former, he actually quotes from or refers to Homer, Hesiod, Thucydides, Aristotle, and Democritus: but his language is really saturated with classical uses, and a large number of the words and phrases which he employs recall the best writers of antiquity. His compositions exhibit signs of much care in production, notably the treatise On Nature (peri Phuseos) and the two Easter letters, to the Alexandrians and to Hierax. Here, and to a somewhat less degree in the letter to Hermammon, he writes in a more rhetorical and elaborate manner than in most of the other fragments which are extant, but even in these passages he is seldom fantastic, or stilted, or obscure; whilst in pure narrative or simple description (e.g. in the letters which record his own or others’ sufferings and in the treatise On the Promises (peri Epangelion)), his language could hardly be more unaffected or better chosen.

Dionysius as Interpreter of Scripture

To what extent did Dionysius accept the principles and methods of Origen, especially in the matter of Biblical criticism and interpretation? The evidence, such as it is, is rather doubtful and conflicting. It is somewhat ominous that after the death of Bishop Demetrius, whose denunciations had caused the master’s removal from Alexandria and his retirement to Cæsarea, we hear of no effort on the part of Dionysius or of any other pupil to obtain his recall. This certainly suggests that, great as their regard and respect for him as a man and a scholar may have been, they either felt themselves powerless to reinstate him, or else considered his views and methods of advocating them detrimental to the welfare of the Church at large. On the other hand, it is pleasing to remember that Dionysius wrote an epistle to his old teacher on the subject of martyrdom, which we may presume was designed to comfort him during his imprisonment at Tyre. We learn, too, on somewhat late authority that after Origen’s death Dionysius wrote a letter to Theotecnus, Bishop of Cæsarea, extolling his master’s virtues. The chief methodical comments on the Bible, of the authenticity of which we may be certain, are those contained in the fragments of the treatise On the Promises (peri Epangelion). This was a direct reply to the Refutation of Allegorists (Elenchos Allegoriston), in which Nepos of Arsenoe had thought to support his grossly materialistic views of the Millennium by the Revelation of S. John the Divine. As the title suggests, this work had, no doubt, attacked Origen’s fondness for the allegorical interpretation of Scripture, and especially on the subject of the Millennium, and therefore we may with some amount of certainty infer that Dionysius in his refutation of Nepos would accept Origen’s methods as a commentator. But the extracts preserved by Eusebius deal almost wholly with the authorship and textual criticism, and so give no proper clue as to his method of interpreting the subject-matter of the book.

In the letter to Basilides the requirements of the case do not call for a style of interpretation which would bring out either a correspondence or a disagreement with Origen’s methods, except so far as it is marked by the frank and free exercise of critical judgment. The commentary on the Beginning of Ecclesiastes, if it is, as seems likely, in part the work of Dionysius, is not inconsistent in style of treatment with a general acceptance of his master’s position. Procopius of Gaza, however, ranks him among the opponents of the allegorical school of interpreters, stating that it was in this very work that Dionysius attacked his master, and a short extract which has been assigned to it by Pitra is distinctly less allegorical in treatment than the rest: it runs as follows –

“On Eccles. iv. 9, 10: Two are better than one,’ etc. As we understand this literally, we do not admit those who accept the interpretation of the statements as referring to the soul and the body; for it is by no means justified, seeing that the soul has the entire control over the ruling and governing both of itself and of the body, whereas the body is the bondman of the soul, subservient and enthralled to it in all its decisions. If, then, the soul be inclined to what is mean and evil, and become careless of better thoughts and considerations, the body is unable to restore it and lead it back to higher things: for that is not natural to it.”

There is also another short extract attributed to our author, which is non-allegorical in its treatment. The evidence therefore is inconclusive on this point: for though Jerome also mentions Dionysius as a commentator on the Bible three times in his letters, he throws no further light on the question.

On the subject of Inspiration we have no ground for thinking that Dionysius took up an independent position. He introduces his Biblical quotation with the phrases current amongst early Christian writers.

The general impression therefore left upon the reader is that Dionysius reverted to the more sober methods of interpreting Scripture that prevailed throughout the Church of his day as a whole, though he approached his master’s theories in his usual sympathetic spirit and availed himself of much that was valuable in them.

His Place in the Church Kalendar

We hear of a Church dedicated to S. Denys in Alexandria at the beginning of the fourth century, which was destroyed by fire in a tumult in the time of Athanasius. October 3 and November 17 are the two most usual dates for his Commemoration in the Kalendar, the former date more especially in the East, where he is honoured as “a holy martyr.” (“Martyr” in this case need not necessarily be taken strictly as meaning “one put to death for the Faith,” though no doubt the mediæval tradition was in favour of his martyrdom in that sense.)

Concluding Remarks

The foregoing sketch is sufficient to show that, as a man of action and a ruler of the Church, Dionysius’s personality is no less striking than as a student, a writer and a thinker. He was clearly a strong yet conciliatory administrator of his province as Bishop of Alexandria, just as he had been a competent and successful teacher and director of sacred studies as head of the Catechetical Schools – one who in each capacity carried on and maintained the great traditions which he inherited from S. Mark and his successors, from Pantænus, Clement and Origen. And not only at home and within his own jurisdiction, as we have seen, did he worthily “magnify his office” and “make full proof of his ministry”; for he made his influence for good felt throughout Christendom. Bishops and clergy from all parts naturally turned to him in their difficulties for advice and guidance; and it is impossible not to feel that his wonderful breadth of judgment and his love of conciliation were of the greatest value to the Church of the third century, and will remain a model for imitation to each succeeding age. Men will always be tempted, as they were in that century, to speak strongly and to act vehemently where their spiritual beliefs are involved, and we may pray that God will never fail to raise up amongst the rulers of His Church men of the type of S. Denys the Great of Alexandria.

SOURCE : https://catholicsaints.info/saint-dionysius-of-alexandria-by-charles-lett-feltoe/

Dionysius of Alexandria, Newly discovered letters to the Popes Stephen and Xystus,

F.C. CONYBEARE, English Historical Review 25 (1910) pp. 111-114

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Newly discovered Letters of Dionysius of Alexandria to the Popes Stephen and Xystus.

DURING the years 254-258 there was a controversy between the see of Rome on the one hand and the Asiatic and African churches on the other as to the validity of baptisms administered by heretics. Pope Stephen maintained that those who had, in an heretical medium, been baptised either in the name of Jesus Christ alone, or in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, ought, after a bishop had laid hands on them, to be admitted to communion; whereas Cyprian of Carthage and Firmilian of Caesarea maintained that heresy on the part of the baptiser rendered baptism null and void. The pope accused his antagonists of rebaptising (a)nabapti/zein), thereby to some extent begging the question at issue, and excommunicated them both in Asia and in Africa. In this controversy Dionysius, patriarch of Alexandria, intervened, and wrote, as Euse-bius relates in the seventh book of his Ecclesiastical History, one letter to Pope Stephen and as many as three to his successor Xystus (257-8). Eusebius has also preserved to us brief extracts from the one letter to Stephen, and from the first and second to Xystus.

In the library of Valarshapat in Russian Armenia is preserved a bulky refutation of the Tome of Leo and of the decrees of Chalcedon by Timotheus (called Aelurus), the patriarch of Alexandria. The original was composed by him in exile at Gangra and Cherson about the year 460, and was translated into Armenian some time between the years 506 and 544. This version has just been edited from an old uncial codex which contains it, No. 1945 in the Catalogue of Karinian, by two of the archimandrites of Etshmiadsin, Dr. Karapet Ter-Mekerttshian and Dr. Erwand Ter-Minassiantz. The method of Timotheus is to adduce the Chalcedonian positions, and to confront them first with extracts from orthodox fathers, especially from the works of his own predecessors in the see of Alexandria ; and, secondly, with passages from writers declared by his antagonists (as he assumes) to be heretical, especially Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Nestorius, Paul of Samosata, and Diodore of Tarsus.

Among the former set of extracts we find one long fragment |112 of Dionysius' letter to Stephen, and two from his first and third letters to Xystus, of which the following is a literal translation:

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I.  Of the blessed Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, from the letter to Stephanus, bishop of Rome.

For as the wisdom [which is] according to the gentiles,1 by changing them into holy persons,2 constitutes them friends of God and prophets ; so, conversely, the wickedness by transmuting into unholy persons, manifests them to be 3 enemies of God and false prophets. What one custom ever included these ? For of a custom there is in any case a single period [as cause], whereas of caprices all kinds of ages 4 [are the causes]. And due causes must always pre-exist before the customs of the gentiles and before human laws. I say human, however, because God, as alone knowing all things before they come into being,5 can naturally also arrive at them by from the first enacting them as law. Men, however, when they have beforehand discerned something, and when they have first formed ideas of certain events, then and not before lay down laws, or make a beginning of customs.6 If then it was from the apostles, as we said above, that this custom took its beginning, we must adjust ourselves thereto, whatsoever may have been their reasons and the grounds on which they acted 7 ; to the end that we too may observe the same in accordance with their practice. For as to things which were written afterwards and which are until now still found, they are ignored by us ; and let them be ignored, no matter what they are. How can these comply with the customs of the ancients ? And in a word I have deemed certain disquisitions about these matters superfluous ; and I feel that to pay attention to them is noisy and vain. For as we are told after a first and second admonition to avoid them,8 so must we admonish and converse about them, and after brief inculcation and talk in common we must desist. On points, however, of prime importance and great weight we must insist. For if anyone utters any impiety about God, as do those who say he is without mercy; or if anyone introduces the worship of strange gods, such an one the law has commanded to stone.9 But we with the vigorous words of our faith will stone them unless 10 they approach the mystery of Christ; or [if] anyone alter or destroy [it], or [say] that he was either not God or not man, or that he did not die or rise again, or that he is |113 not coming again to judge the quick and the dead ; or if he preach any other gospel than we have preached, let him be accursed, says Paul.11 But if anyone despises the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, let such an one be at once ranked with the dead. For these reasons, that we may be in accord, church with church and bishop with bishop and elder with elder, let us be careful in our utterances. Moreover in judging of and dealing with particular cases,—as to how it is proper to admit those who come to us from without,12 and how to supervise those who are within,—we give instructions to the local primates 13 who under divine imposition of hands were appointed to discharge these duties ; for they shall give a summary account to the Lord of whatsoever they do.

[This account perfectly accords with what we know from other sources of this controversy. Pope Stephen, as the tract De Rebaptismate alleges, appealed to vetustissima consuetudo ac traditio ecclesiastica. Dionysius meets his appeal by asking how could the orthodox and the heretic have in common any custom? Qualis una istos circumclusit consuetudo? He argues from Tit. iii. 10 that heretics should be left severely alone, and affirms that he has instructed the duly ordained ecclesiastical authorities of his province to treat those who ad ecclesiam advolant—to use the phrase of the De Rebaptismate—as if they came wholly from the outside or pagan world, that is to baptise them, and afterwards to watch them carefully.]

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II. Of the same from the first letter to Xystus, chief bishop of Rome.

Inasmuch as you have written thus, setting forth the pious legislation, which we continually read and now have in remembrance—namely that it shall suffice only to lay hands on those who shall have made profession in baptism, whether in pretence or in truth,14 of God Almighty and of Christ and of the Holy Spirit; but those over whom there has not been invoked the name either of Father or of Son or of the Holy Spirit, these we must baptise, but not rebaptise. This is the sure and immovable teaching and tradition, begun by our Lord after his resurrection from the dead, when he gave his apostles the command 15 : Go ye, make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. This then was preserved and fulfilled by his successors, the blessed apostles, and by all the bishops prior to ourselves who have died in the holy church and shared in its life 16; and it has lasted down to us, because it is firmer than the whole world. For, he said, heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.17 |114 

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III. Of the same to the same from the third letter.

If then our faith urges us to have zeal for God and with our entire heart love him ; and if we must regard as unclean only those who contemn the really one and only God, and Creator and Lord of heaven and earth and of all things, declaring that he is inferior to and less estimable than some other god ; and they attribute wickedness to the all good, or they do not believe that his Beloved is our Saviour Jesus Christ, whatever else he be; but breaking up the marvellous economy and mighty mystery, they believe some of them that he is not God nor Son of God, but others, that he never became man nor came in the flesh, but say that he was a phantasm and shadow—all these John18 has rightly in his epistle called anti-Christs. Moreover of these the prophet19 also bore witness, saying: Thy hated ones, O Lord, I have hated, and because of thine enemies I have wasted away. With perfect hatred I have hated them; they are become mine enemies. And these are all they that have among us the appellation of heretics. If however we in the least let them have their way or side with them, then no longer will the precept to love God with our whole heart be observed in its entirety, though that it is which it ever profits us to foster and increase.

[In this letter Dionysius protests against the least concession being made to the heretics whose errors he enumerates, in the way of recognising their baptisms as valid. F. C. CONYBEARE.]

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[Footnotes have been moved to the end.  Greek text is rendered using the Scholars Press SPIonic font, free from here.]

1. 1 Perhaps cf. Acts x. 35 and Rom. ii. 13.

2. 2 Or souls. 

3. 3 As if the Greek were a)pe/fhnen.

4. 4 Ages in the sense in which we speak of the seven ages of human life. I supply the words in brackets as necessary to the sense.

5. 5 The Armenian has a compound word which means pre-existence ; but probably the Greek read pro_ th~j gene/sewj, which the Armenian translated literally in defiance of his native idiom.

6. 6 The idea of this passage seems to be that which Suidas expresses in the words to_ e1qoj ou_k e1stin eu3rhma a)nqrw&pwn, a)lla_ bi/on kai\ xro&nou. Men first take the drift of events and then inductively establish customs and frame laws on the basis of them. God however enacts facts in advance, as being cognisant of events beforehand. The passage is anyhow obscure.

7. 7 The Greek original must have run somewhat as follows : ta_ kat' au)touj faino&mena kai\ e0c w{n e1pracan.

8. 8 Tit, iii. 10.

9. 9 Deut. xiii. 10.

10. 10 The sense rather requires lest.

11. 11 Loosely quoted from Gal. i. 9.

12. 12 The phrase recalls the words in Euseb. H. E. vii. 5, 4, tou_j prosio&ntaj a)po_ ai9re/sewn.

13. 13 Perhaps xwrepi/skopoi in the original.

14. 14 Phil. i. 18.

15. 15 Matt. xxviii. 19.

16. 16 The Greek may have had the word sumpoliteusame/nwn

17. 17 Matt. xxiv. 35.

18. 1 John ii. 22, iv. 3

19. Ps. cxxxviii. (cxxxix) 21, 22.

This text was transcribed by Roger Pearse, Ipswich, UK, 2002.  All material on this page is in the public domain - copy freely.

Greek text is rendered using the Scholars Press SPIonic font, free from here.

SOURCE : http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/dionysius_alexandria_letters.htm

Saint Dionysius of Alexandria, also called Saint Dionysius The Great, (born c. 200, Alexandria—died c. 265, Alexandria; feast day November 17), bishop of Alexandria, then the most important Eastern see, and a chief opponent of Sabellianism (q.v.).

A Christian convert, Dionysius studied in Alexandria at the catechetical school headed by Origen, whom in 231/232 he was elected to succeed. In 247/248 he became bishop of Alexandria. During the persecution (250–251) of Christians by the Roman emperor Decius, Dionysius fled to the Libyan Desert, and he was again exiled in the Valerian persecution (257–260).

On his return to Alexandria in about 260, Dionysius favoured readmitting penitent apostates to the church in opposition to those who wanted to exclude them permanently. Engaged in the bitter controversy over baptism performed by heretics, Dionysius did not insist on rebaptizing converts who had received heretical baptism, but he recognized the right of communities to rebaptize if they preferred. He denied that the Book of Revelation was written by St. John the Evangelist and denounced the Millenarians, who, basing their argument on a literal reading of Revelation, believed that after 1,000 years Jesus Christ would return and establish his kingdom on Earth.

Dionysius was especially noted for his attacks on the Sabellians, who accused him of separating the persons of the Trinity (tritheism) and other heresies. Protests were sent to Pope St. Dionysius in Rome, who condemned those who denied any distinction between the persons of the Trinity and those who acknowledged three separate persons. Dionysius of Alexandria accepted the Pope’s judgment and repudiated the Sabellians’ charges, but he insisted that the Trinity consisted of three inseparable persons. His position has since been vindicated by the church.

Dionysius also wrote a treatise on nature against the atomism of the Greek philosopher Epicurus. Though highly esteemed and often cited by the leading Byzantine theologians, his works are known only from quotations, many of them extensive, preserved by Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea and other ecclesiastical writers.

SOURCE : https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Dionysius-of-Alexandria

San Dionigi Vescovo di Alessandria

8 aprile

m. 264

Martirologio Romano: Ad Alessandria d’Egitto, san Dionigi, vescovo, che, uomo di grande cultura, insigne per avere più volte professato la fede e mirabile per la varietà dei patimenti e delle torture subite, carico di giorni morì confessore della fede al tempo degli imperatori Valeriano e Gallieno. 

Nacque in Alessandria verso la fine del II sec. da genitori pagani. Stando alla sua stessa testimonianza, prima della conversione godeva di una condizione agiata. Giunto alla fede per la lettura di libri cristiani, fu discepolo di Origene, con il quale rimase sempre in buoni rapporti. Nel 231-32 assunse la direzione del Didascalèion, succedendo ad Eraclas, divenuto vescovo; in quel tempo era già sacerdote, benché, come sembra, sposato e con figli. Nel 247, alla morte di Eraclas, divenne vescovo di Alessandria. Il suo episcopato, che durò diciassette anni, fu funestato da tre persecuzioni: la prima, del 248, scoppiata ad Alessandria alla fine del regno di Filippo l'Arabo, che degenerò in guerra civile; la seconda, di Decio (249-51), che imperversò in tutto l'Impero, e fu tra le più accanite che la storia conosca; e la terza, che scoppiò nel 257, sotto Valeriano.

La persecuzione di Decio ce la descrive lo stesso Dionigi nelle sue lettere a Germano e a Fabio. Anche ad Alessandria, come nelle altre città dell'Impero, si ebbero parecchi apostati, ma numerosi furono anche i confessori: molti, dice Dionigi, presero la fuga ed «errarono per i deserti e le montagne, assaliti dalla fame e dalla sete, dal freddo e dalle malattie, dai briganti e dalle bestie feroci». Appena pubblicato l'editto di persecuzione, il prefetto d'Alessandria, Sabino, fece cercare il vescovo dovunque, meno che nel suo palazzo, dov'era invece rimasto. La sera del quarto giorno, anche Dionigi si decise a fuggire, perché la situazione in città si faceva sempre più confusa. Arrestato dalle guardie imperiali, venne quasi subito liberato da una folla di contadini in festa, tra i quali erano capitati per puro caso. Tornò ad Alessandria alla fine del 251, dopo la morte di Decio.

Durante la terza persecuzione, scoppiata nel 257. sotto Valeriano, Dionigi venne esiliato a Kephro in Libia e poi a Kolluthion nella Mareotide. Approfittò di questa sua permanenza in esilio per annunziare il Vangelo agli abitanti del luogo, che ancora l'ignoravano. Terminata anche questa persecuzione con la disfatta militare di Valeriano, rimasto prigioniero dei Persiani, poté rientrare nella sua città grazie ad un editto di Gallieno che nel 260 gli rendeva la libertà (la data del 262, proposta da qualcuno, sembra inesatta). Non erano però finite le prove per il santo vescovo: ad Alessandria scoppiò una rivoluzione, ed egli si trovò tagliato fuori dalla comunità dei suoi fedeli, potendo comunicare con loro solo per lettera. Triste retaggio della guerra, poi, furono la carestia e la peste, che colmarono di dolore gli ultimi suoi giorni. Invitato a partecipare al sinodo di Antiochia del 264, dove sarebbero state giudicate le dottrine di Paolo di Samosata, gentilmente si scusò, adducendo a motivo «la sua vecchiezza e la debolezza del suo corpo». Mori in quello stesso anno «dodicesimo dell'imperatore Gallieno, dopo avere presieduto per diciassette anni, come vescovo, alla Chiesa di Alessandria». La sua festa si celebra il 17 novembre.

SCRITTI E DOTTRINA

Durante il suo episcopato, Dionigi si trovò implicato in tutte le discussioni teologiche del suo tempo e, benché fosse soprattutto pastore, non poté esimersi dal dire una parola chiarificatrice su molti punti controversi.

Scrisse innanzitutto un gran numero di lettere: a noi ne sono pervenute due intere e vari frammenti di altre. Si riferiscono a tre problemi distinti: lettere de lapsis, lettere sulla questione de rebaptismate, lettere festali.

Anche ad Alessandria, come a Roma, Cartagine e Antiochia, la persecuzione di Decio sollevò la questione dei lapsi, i «caduti» che poi chiedevano di essere perdonati e riammessi nella Chiesa. Come il papa Cornelio a Roma e il vescovo Cipriano a Cartagine, anche Dionigi usò con loro molto tatto e molta comprensione. Scrisse parole di moderazione anche a Novaziano che, col pretesto di maggiore austerità, si era ribellato al papa Cornelio. In particolare, egli aveva ordinato che in ogni caso «venisse dato il perdono a coloro che erano in fin di vita, se lo chiedevano, e soprattutto se già prima ne avevano presentato domanda».

L'altro problema riguardava l'uso di ribattezzare coloro che entravano nella Chiesa cattolica e già erano stati battezzati da eretici. Quest'uso era stato introdotto in alcune Chiese dell'Africa e dell'Asia minore, ma era stato chiaramente riprovato dalla Chiesa di Roma. Dionigi ne parla in sei lettere diverse: una al papa Stefano, una al prete Filemone di Roma, una al prete Dionigi, pure di Roma, due personali al papa Sisto e una, come scrive Eusebio, «indirizzata da lui e dalla sua Chiesa a Sisto e alla Chiesa di Roma » 

Anche su questo problema, Dionigi è molto discreto: egli si limita a non biasimare l'uso di ribattezzare, essendo molto antico, introdotto al tempo dei vescovi «che sono stati prima di noi, nelle Chiese più popolate e nelle assemblee dei fratelli, a Iconio e Sinnade».

Nelle lettere festali, molte delle quali sono andate perdute, annunziava come di solito la data della Pasqua e dava avvisi e consigli ai vescovi suffraganei e ai fedeli.

Compose anche alcuni trattati, di solito disposti anch'essi in forma di lettere: uno contro il millenarismo, un altro contro la filosofia di Epicuro, un terzo sulle tentazioni, un quarto sul sabato, e altri. Particolarmente importante, per la storia dei dogmi, è il suo intervento in merito al mistero trinitario. In una sua lettera del 260, indirizzata a Eufranore e Ammonio, trovandosi in polemica contro il sabellianismo, si era lasciato sfuggire alcune espressioni, relative al Figlio di Dio, che i suoi avversari considerarono eretiche, per cui venne accusato, presso il papa Dionigi, di confessare in Dio tre ipostasi, di separare il Figlio dal Padre considerandolo una creatura, di negare che egli è consustanziale al Padre, e altre eresie. Dionigi rispose prima con una lettera e poi con un trattato, intitolato Confutazione e Apologia, in quattro libri, che rendono pienamente ragione della sua ortodossia. Egli non separa le tre Persone: chi dice Padre dice anche Figlio e viceversa e chi nomina lo Spirito Santo, dice nel medesimo tempo anche da chi e per mezzo di chi procede. Quanto alla voce consustanziale nota che non si trova «nelle Scritture»; però accetta la dottrina che con essa si vuole esprimere. Scrivendo egli quasi un secolo prima delle famose lotte trinitarie, non farà meraviglia se si incontrano in lui paragoni «meno convenienti» e se il suo linguaggio sembra alludere a una unità più «specifica» che «numerica» tra le divine.

Fu soprattutto pastore. Sempre premuroso dell'unità cattolica e della integrità della fede, combatté il sabellianismo e accettò senza difficoltà i richiami di papa Dionigi sulla dottrina trinitaria; nello scisma di Novaziano si schierò con Cornelio, il legittimo vescovo di Roma; nella questione dei lapsi consigliò larga comprensione e generosa benevolenza; e se nella controversia battesimale apparve remissivo, fu perché la considerava più un affare disciplinare che una questione dogmatica. Coraggioso difensore dell'ortodossia, zelantissimo del bene spirituale del suo gregge, impavido di fronte al pericolo, abile e prudente nel governo, largo e generoso con tutti, egli rimane ancor oggi un modello per i suoi esempi, una guida sicura per la sua dottrina.

Autore: Andrea Tessarolo

SOURCE : http://www.santiebeati.it/dettaglio/48820

Voir aussi : http://www.copticchurch.net/topics/synexarion/popeDionysius.html

 https://oca.org/saints/lives/2010/10/05/102880-hieromartyr-dionysius-the-bishop-of-alexandria