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Dionysius
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Introductory Note to Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria.
[770] That is, as Balsamon explains, the six days of the week of our Lord’s passion.
[771] To these canons are appended the comments of Balsamon and Zonaras, which it is not necessary to give here.
[772] Matt. ix. 20; Luke viii. 43.
[773] Referring to the relations of marriage, dealt with in 1 Cor. vii. 5, etc.
[774] διακρίνονται.
[775] Rom. xiv. 23. [Gr. κατακέκριται = is condemned = self-condemned. Wordsworth cites Cicero, De Officiis, i. 30.]
[776] [The entire absence of despotic authority in these episcopal teachings is to be noted. 2 Cor. i. 24.]
Epistle I.—To Domitius and Didymus.
[777] Eusebius, Hist. Eccles., vii. 11.
[779] Reading ἐπειδὴ πυνθάνεσθε, for which some codices give ἐπεὶ πυνθάνεσθαι.
[780] στρατηγῶν. Christophorsonus would read στρατηγοῦ in the sense of commander. But the word is used here of the duumviri, or magistrates of Alexandria. And that the word στρατηγός was used in this civil acceptation as well as in the common military application, we see by many examples in Athanasius, Ammianus Marcellinus, and others. Thus, as Valesius remarks, the soldiers (στρατιωτῶν) here will be the band with the centurion, and the attendants (ὑπηρετῶν) will be the civil followers of the magistrates.
[781] This happened in the first persecution under Decius, when Dionysius was carried off by the decision of the prefect Sabinus to Taposiris, as he informs us in his epistle to Germanus. Certainly any one who compares that epistle of Dionysius to Germanus with this one to Domitius, will have no doubt that he speaks of one and the same event in both. Hence Eusebius is in error in thinking that in this epistle of Dionysius to Domitius we have a narrative of the events relating to the persecution of Valerian,—a position which may easily be refuted from Dionysius himself. For in the persecution under Valerian, Dionysius was not carried off into exile under military custody, nor were there any men from Mareotis, who came and drove off the soldiers, and bore him away unwillingly, and set him at liberty again; nor had Dionysius on that occasion the presbyters Gaius and Faustus, and Peter and Paul, with him. All these things happened to Dionysius in that persecution which began a little before Decius obtained the empire, as he testifies himself in his epistle to Germanus. But in the persecution under Valerian, Dionysius was accompanied in exile by the presbyter Maximus, and the deacons Faustus, and Eusebius, and Chæremon, and a certain Roman cleric, as he tells us in the epistle to Germanus.—Valesius.
[782] ἐν τῇ νόσῳ. Rufinus reads νήσῳ, and renders it, “But of the deacons, some died in the island after the pains of confession.” But Dionysius refers to the pestilence which traversed the whole Roman world in the times of Gallus and Volusianus, as Eusebius in his Chroniconand others record. See Aurelius Victor. Dionysius makes mention of this sickness again in the paschal epistle to the Alexandrians, where he also speaks of the deacons who were cut off by that plague.—Vales.
[783] περιστολὰς ἐκτελεῖν. Christophorsonus renders it: “to prepare the linen cloths in which the bodies of the blessed martyrs who departed this life might be wrapped.” In this Valesius thinks he errs by looking at the modern method of burial, whereas among the ancient Christians the custom was somewhat different, the bodies being dressed out in full attire, and that often at great cost, as Eusebius shows us in the case of Astyrius, in the Hist. Eccles., vii. 16. Yet Athanasius, in his Life of Antonius, has this sentence: “The Egyptians are accustomed to attend piously to the funerals of the bodies of the dead, and especially those of the holy martyrs, and to wrap them in linen cloths: they are not wont, however, to consign them to the earth, but to place them on couches, and keep them in private apartments.”
[784] Eusebius, Hist. Eccles., vi. 45.
[785] Jerome, in his Catalogus, where he adduces the beginning of this epistle, gives Novatianus for Novatus. So in the Chronicon of Georgius Syncellus we have Διονύσιος Ναυατιανῷ. Rufinus’ account appears to be that there were two such epistles,—one to Novatus, and another to Novatianus. The confounding of these two forms seems, however, to have been frequent among the Greeks. [See Lardner, Credib., sub voce Novat. Wordsworth thinks the Greeks shortened the name, on the grounds which Horace notes ad vocem “Equotuticum.” Satires, I. v. 87.]
[786] We read, with Gallandi, καὶ ἦν οὐκ ἀδοξυτέρα τῆς ἕνεκεν τοῦ μὴ ἰδωλολατρεῦσαι (sic) γινομένης, ἡ ἕνεκεν τοῦ μὴ σχίσαι μαρτυρία. This is substantially the reading of three Venetian codices, as also of Sophronius on Jerome’s De vir. illustr., ch. 69, and Georgius Syncellus in the Chronogr., p. 374, and Nicephorus Callist., Hist. Eccles., vi. 4. Pearson, in the Annales Cyprian., Num. x. p. 31, proposes θῦσαι for σχίσαι. Rufinus renders it: “et erat non inferior gloria sustinere martyrium ne scindatur ecclesia quam est illa ne idolis immoletur.”
Epistle III.—To Fabius, Bishop of Antioch.
[787] Eusebius, Hist. Eccles., vi. 41, 42, 44. Certain codices read Fabianus for Fabius, and that form is adopted also by Rufinus. Eusebius introduces this epistle thus: “The same author, in an epistle written to Fabius bishop of Antioch, gives the following account of the conflicts of those who suffered martyrdom at Alexandria.”
[788] καὶ φθάσας ὁ κακῶν, etc. Pearson, Annales Cyprian. ad ann., 249 § 1, renders it rather thus: “et prævertens malorum huic urbi vates et auctor, quisquis ille fuit, commovit,” etc.
[789] εὐσέβειαν τὴν θρησκείαν δαιμόνων. Valesius thinks the last three words in the text ( = service to their demons) an interpolation by some scholiast. [Note θρησκείαν = cultus, James i. 27.]
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