Dionysius

Footnotes

Introductory Note to Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria.

^[607] Epistle to Philemon, infra.

^[608] Vol. v. p. 390, this series.

^[609] There are also passages, of larger or smaller extent, bearing upon his life and his literary activity, in Jerome (De viris illustr., ch. 69; and Præfatio ad Lib., xviii., Comment. in Esaiam), Athanasius (De Sententia Dionysii, and De Synodi Nicænæ Decretis), Basil (De Spiritu Sancto, ch. 29; Epist. ad Amphiloch., and Epist. ad Maximum). Among modern authorities, we may refer specially to the Dissertation on his life and writings by S. de Magistris, in the folio edition issued under his care in Greek and Latin at Rome in 1796; to the account given by Basnage in the Histoire de l’Eglise, tome i. livre ii. ch. v. p. 68; to the complete collection of his extant works in Gallandi’s Bibliotheca Patrum, iii. p. 481, etc.; as well as to the accounts in Cave’s Hist. Lit., i. p. 95, and elsewhere.

^[610] [Not, however, as an inferior, but as one bishop in those days remonstrated with another, and as he himself remonstrated with Stephen. See infra.]

^[611] Hist. Eccl., viii. 7.

I.—From the Two Books on the Promises.

^[612] In opposition to Noëtus, a bishop in Egypt. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., vii. 24 and 25. Eusebius introduces this extract in the following terms: “There are also two books of his on the subject of the promises. The occasion of writing these was furnished by a certain Nepos, a bishop in Egypt, who taught that the promises which were given to holy men in the sacred Scriptures were to be understood according to the Jewish sense of the same; and affirmed that there would be some kind of a millennial period, plenished with corporeal delights, upon this earth. And as he thought that he could establish this opinion of his by the Revelation of John, he had composed a book on this question, entitled Refutation of the Allegorists. This, therefore, is sharply attacked by Dionysius in his books on the Promises. And in the first of these books he states his own opinion on the subject; while in the second he gives us a discussion on the Revelation of John, in the introduction to which he makes mention of Nepos.” [Of this Noëtus, see the Philosophumena, vol. v., this series.]

^[613] As it is clear from this passage that this work by Dionysius was written against Nepos, it is strange that, in his preface to the eighteenth book of his Commentaries on Isaiah, Jerome should affirm it to have been composed against Irenæus of Lyons. Irenæus was certainly of the number of those who held millennial views, and who had been persuaded to embrace such by Papias, as Jerome himself tells us in the Catalogus and as Eusebius explains towards the close of the third book of his History. But that this book by Dionysus was written not against Irenæus but against Nepos, is evident, not only from this passage in Eusebius, but also from Jerome himself, in his work On Ecclesiastical Writers, where he speaks of Dionysius.—Vales. [Compare (this series, infra) the comments of Victorinus of Petau for a Western view of the millennial subject.]

^[614] τῆς πολλῆς ψαλμῳδίας. Christophorsonus interprets this of psalms and hymns composed by Nepos. It was certainly the practice among the ancient Christians to compose psalms and hymns in honour of Christ. Eusebius bears witness to this in the end of the fifth book of his History. Mention is made of these psalms in the Epistle of the Council of Antioch against Paul of Samosata, and in the penultimate canon of the Council of Laodicea, where there is a clear prohibition of the use of ψαλμοὶ ἰδιωτικοί in the church, i.e., of psalms composed by private individuals. For this custom had obtained great prevalence, so that many persons composed psalms in honour of Christ, and got them sung in the church. It is psalms of this kind, consequently, that the Fathers of the Council of Laodicea forbid to be sung thereafter in the church, designating them ἰδιωτικοί, i.e., composed by unskilled men, and not dictated by the Holy Spirit. Thus is the matter explained by Agobardus in his book De ritu canendi psalmos in Ecclesia.—Vales. [See vol. v., quotation from Pliny.]

^[615] ταυτῆ μᾶλλον ᾗ προανεπαύσατο: it may mean, perhaps, for the way in which he has gone to his rest before us.

^[616] κατεπαγγελλομένων, i.e., diu ante promittunt quam tradunt. The metaphor is taken from the mysteries of the Greeks, who were wont to promise great and marvellous discoveries to the initiated, and then kept them on the rack by daily expectation, in order to confirm their judgment and reverence by such suspense in the conveyance of knowledge, as Tertullian says in his book Against the Valentinians.—Vales. [Vol. iii. p. 503.]

^[617] Reading ἐλπίζειν ἀναπειθόντων for ἐλπιζόμενα πειθόντων, with the Codex Mazarin.

^[618] ἐν μὲν οὖν τῷ ᾽Αρσενοείτῃ. In the three codices here, as well as in Nicephorus and Ptolemy, we find this scription, although it is evident that the word should be written ᾽Αρσινοειτῃ, as the district took its name from Queen Arsinoe.—Vales.

^[619] εἱ καὶ φαίνοιντο. There is another reading, εἱ καὶ μὴ φαίνοιντο, although they might not appear to be correct. Christophorsonus renders it: ne illis quæ fuerant ante ab ipsis decreta, si quidquam in eis veritati repugnare videretur, mordicus adhærerent præcavebant.

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