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                  TRANSLATIONS OF CHRISTIAN LITERATURE
                                SERIES I
                              GREEK TEXTS

                            ST. DIONYSIUS OF
                               ALEXANDRIA

                        TRANSLATION OF CHRISTIAN
                          LITERATURE. SERIES I
                              GREEK TEXTS




                             ST. DIONYSIUS
                             OF ALEXANDRIA
                         LETTERS AND TREATISES


                     _By_ CHARLES LETT FELTOE, D.D.

                         SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING
                      CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. London
                    The Macmillan Company. New York




                                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.

  _Ripple by Dover_
    _March 1918._




                                    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 Caesarea) 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,[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 "Sabaean" 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 ({Aigyptioi}); so that it would be rather surprising
to find that his family came from the remoter parts of Arabia, where the
Sabaeans dwelt. The other tradition of his having been a rhetorician may
be due to some confusion between our Dionysius and a much later
Alexandrian writer of the same name, who edited the works of the
Areopagite with notes and wrote other treatises. On the other hand,
Dionysius's literary style is such that it might very well have been
formed by the study and practice of rhetoric, while he has been thought
himself to corroborate the statement of the _Chronicon Orientale_, as to
the high position of his family, in his reply to Germanus (p. 49), where
he refers to the "losses of dignities" which he has suffered for the
Faith.

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


                             His Conversion

4. The _Chronicon Orientale_ assigns the reading of St. Paul's letters as
the cause of his conversion to Christianity, and proceeds to state how,
after their perusal, he presented himself for baptism to Demetrius, then
Bishop of Alexandria, who admitted him in due course. Whether this was
actually the cause of his conversion or not, we know from what he has
himself told us in his letter to Philemon (p. 56), that both before and
after baptism he was a diligent student of all that was written for and
against Christianity.


                         Was He Married or Not?

5. Whether, in accordance with the common practice of the Eastern Church
at that time, Dionysius was married or not, is a moot point. He addressed
his treatise {peri Physeos} to one Timotheus {ho pais}, and we read of
{hoi paides} (of whom Timotheus was one) as accompanying him in his
flight (p. 44). One would naturally infer from this that he was then a
widower (his wife not being mentioned), and that these were his sons; but
they may have been his pupils, on the supposition that he was still
Catechete as well as Bishop, or, which is less likely, his servants.[2]


               He becomes Head of the Catechetical School

6. When Demetrius died in 231, Heraclas, who for some years had been
associated with Origen at the Catechetical School and had just been left
in charge of it by him on his final retirement that year from Alexandria,
was elected Bishop, while Dionysius, who had himself been a pupil of
Origen there, was appointed to fill the vacancy he created. It is
possible that the treatise {peri Physeos}, extracts from which are given
below (on pp. 91 ff.), was composed while Dionysius held this important
post, and that a commentary on _Ecclesiastes_, some genuine fragments of
which probably remain, belongs to the same period. The former of these is
much the more valuable work, for in it for the first time a Christian
undertook systematically to refute the atomistic theories of Epicurus and
his followers.


                    He becomes Bishop of Alexandria

7. Sixteen years later, in 247, upon the death of Heraclas, Dionysius
succeeded to the bishopric as the fourteenth occupant of the see,
possibly, as has already been suggested, without at once resigning his
post at the School. Philip the Arabian (of Bostra) had then been Emperor
for three years, a position he was destined to retain for two years
longer. Like Alexander Severus before him, he was known to favour the
Christians, and Dionysius himself bears witness to the comparative
mildness of his rule (p. 37). For a short time, therefore, the new Bishop
and his flock were left in peace, though even before the death of Philip
signs of the coming storm appeared. In the last year of his reign
Dionysius tells Fabius, Bishop of Antioch (p. 35), that "the prophet and
poet of evil to this city, whoever he was," stirred up the populace
against the Christians in Alexandria, and several persons were cruelly
martyred. This reign of terror lasted some time, but was interrupted in
the autumn of 249 by the revolution which caused the deposition and death
of Philip, and which set Decius on the throne in his stead. The respite
was only too brief, for by the beginning of the new year the edict which
Decius had issued was being actively carried into effect. The Bishops
were at first singled out for attack. Origen, though not one of them, was
included among the earlier victims--on account, no doubt, of his
prominence as a scholar and a teacher--being imprisoned at Tyre and
cruelly tortured, though not actually martyred.


                    Under the Persecution of Dec