TRANSLATIONS OF CHRISTIAN LITERATURE
SERIES I
GREEK TEXTS

ST. DIONYSIUS OF
ALEXANDRIA

PREFACE

Not long after my edition of this Father’s writings appeared in the Cambridge Patristic Texts (1904), I was invited to translate the Letters and some of the other more certainly genuine fragments that remain into English for the present series; but it is not until now that I have been able to accomplish the task I then undertook. Since then, though chiefly occupied in other researches, I have naturally acquired a more extensive and accurate knowledge of St. Dionysius and his times, some of the results of which will be found in this volume. Nevertheless, I was bound to incorporate a considerable amount of the information and conclusions arrived at in the former work, and wish to express my acknowledgments to the Syndics of the University Press for leave to do so, as well as to those again whose names I mentioned as having assisted me before.

In the present book Dr. A. J. Mason was kind enough to advise me over the choice of extracts from the two treatises, On Nature and Refutation and Defence, and on one or two minor points, while a friend and neighbour (the Rev. L. Patterson) read through the whole of the MS. before it went to the printer and gave me the benefit of a fresh mind upon a number of small details of style and fact, for which I sincerely thank him.

C. L. Feltoe.

CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE V

INTRODUCTION 9

LETTERS 35

TO BASILIDES 76

“ON THE PROMISES” 82

“ON NATURE” 91

“REFUTATION AND DEFENCE” 101

ADDITIONAL NOTE 108

INDEX 109

INTRODUCTION

1. None of the many influential occupants of the see of Alexandria and of the many distinguished heads of the Catechetical School in that city seem to have been held in higher respect by the ancients than Dionysius. By common consent he is styled “the Great,” while Athanasius, one of his most famous-successors as Bishop, calls him “Teacher of the Church universal,” and Basil (of Cæsarea) refers to him as “a person of canonical authority” (κανονικός). He took a prominent and important part in all the leading movements and controversies of the day, and his opinions always carried great weight, especially in Eastern Christendom. His writings are freely referred to and quoted, not only by Eusebius the historian,^[1] but also by Athanasius, Basil and John of Damascus amongst others. And what we gather of his personal story from his letters and various fragments embodied in the works of others—and very little, if anything else, for certain has come down to us—undoubtedly leaves the impression that the verdict of the ancient world is correct.

His Family and Earlier Life

2. The references to his family and early years are extremely scanty and vague. In the Chronicon Orientale, p. 94, he is stated to have been a Sabaita and sprung from “the chiefs and nobles of that race”: and several writers speak as if he had been a rhetorician before his conversion (as Cyprian of Carthage had been). The exact meaning of the term “Sabaita” above is doubtful. Strictly used, it should mean a member of the Sabaite convent near Jerusalem, and the Chronicon may be claiming Dionysius as that, though, of course, without any ground for the claim. If it is equivalent, however, to “Sabæan” here, it implies an Arab descent for him, which is hardly probable, as he seems always to consider himself connected by education and residence, if not by birth, with the city-folk of Alexandria, whom he distinguishes from the Coptic inhabitants of Egypt (Αἰγύπτιοι); so that it would be rather surprising to find that his family came from the remoter parts of Arabia, where the Sabæans dwelt. The other tradition of his having been a rhetorician may be due to some confusion between our Dionysius and a much later Alexandrian writer of the same name, who edited the works of the Areopagite with notes and wrote other treatises. On the other hand, Dionysius’s literary style is such that it might very well have been formed by the study and practice of rhetoric, while he has been thought himself to corroborate the statement of the Chronicon Orientale, as to the high position of his family, in his reply to Germanus (p. 49), where he refers to the “losses of dignities” which he has suffered for the Faith.

3. He was probably a priest, and not less than thirty, when he became head of the Catechetical School in 231, and in 264 he excused himself from attendance at the Council of Antioch on the ground of age and infirmity; and so it is a safe inference that he was born about or before 200, being thus nearly of an age with Cyprian of Carthage, and only ten or fifteen years younger than Origen, his master.

His Conversion

4. The Chronicon Orientale assigns the reading of St. Paul’s letters as the cause of his conversion to Christianity, and proceeds to state how, after their perusal, he presented himself for baptism to Demetrius,