Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/277

 Lost in the crowd of predecessors whom Irenaeus and Clement hardly ever name and merged in Justin's shadow, convinced that God alone can reveal Himself, and content to be hidden in his Saviour's righteousness, the old writer has gradually emerged by virtue of an inborn lustre, at once the obscurest and most brilliant of his contemporaries, and has cast a glory on the early church while remaining himself unknown.

Authorities.—Gallandi, ap. Migne, ''Patr. Gk.'' ii. 1159 ff.; Bickersteth, Christian Fathers, (1838); Dorner, Person of Christ, i. 260 ff.; Hefele, Patres Apostolici (Tübingen, 1842); Neander, Church History, ii. 420, 425 (Bohn); Westcott, Canon (ed. 1875), pp. 85 ff.; Bunsen, Hippolytus, i. 187 ff., Analecta Antenicaena, i. 103 ff.; Donaldson, ''Hist. Christ. Lit.'' ii. 126 ff.; Davidson, ''Intro. to N. T.'' ii. 399; Harnack, Patres Apostolici, i. 205 ff. (Leipz. 1875, 2nd ed. 1878); Cureton, Spicilegium Syriacum (Lond. 1854); Ceillier, Auteurs sacrés, i. 412 (ed. 1865); Bigg, Origins of Christianity; Lightfoot and Harmer, ''Apost. Fathers'', p. 487. An Eng. trans. of the ''Ep. to Diognetus is included in the Ante-Nicene Lib.'' and another by L. B. Radford is pub. cheaply by S.P.C.K.

[E.E.B.]

Dionysia (1), virgin martyr at Lampsacus, 250. Seeing Nicomachus suddenly seized with madness and dying in horror, after having denied the faith under torture, and sacrificed to the heathen gods, Dionysia cried out, "Miserable and most wretched man! Why, for one hour's respite, didst thou take to thyself unceasing and indescribable punishment!" The proconsul Optimus hearing her, asked if she were a Christian. "Yes," she answered, "and that is why I weep for this unhappy man, who loses eternal rest by not being able to suffer a moment's pain." The proconsul dismissed her with a brutal order. Next day, having succeeded in maintaining her chastity, she escaped, and joined Andrew and Paul, two Christians who were being stoned to death. "I wish to die with you here," she said, "that I may live with you in heaven!" Optimus ordered her to be taken from Andrew and Paul, and beheaded, May 15, 250, the 2nd year of Decius. Ruinart, ''Act. Sinc. Mart.'' p. 159; Ceillier, ii. 118.

[W.M.S.]

Dionysia (2), at Alexandria, 251, mother of many children, who, loving her Lord more than her children, died by the sword, along with the venerable lady Mercuria, without being tried by torture, as the prefect had succeeded so ill with Ammonarion that he was ashamed to go on torturing and being defeated by women (Dion. Alex. ad Fab. ap. Eus. H. E. vi. 41).

[E.B.B.]

Dionysia (3), St., a Christian martyr in the 5th cent. According to the narrative of Victor Vitensis, her contemporary, she was a lady of rare beauty in Africa, who preferred tortures, shameful indignities, and death to renouncing her faith; a victim of the persecution of the orthodox or Catholic Christians by Hunneric, king of the Vandals. The date assigned for her martyrdom is 484.

See Victor Vitensis, de Persecutione Africanâ, V. c. 1; ap. Migne,''Patr. Lat. lvii.; Tillem., Mémoires'', t. xvi. (Paris, 1701, 4to); Baronius, Annales Ecclesiastici, t. viii. p. 463 (Lucae, 1741, fol.).

[I.G.S.]

Dionysius (1), Pseudo-Areopagita. Under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite there has passed current a body of remarkable writings. Before shewing that the author of these writings was not the Dionysius converted by St. Paul (Acts xvii. 34), we must discriminate both of them from a third Dionysius, the St. Denys of France. The identity of all three was popularly believed for many centuries, and even yet is maintained by some.

Was, then, the convert of St. Paul at Athens the first apostle of France? The answer would not seem doubtful from the statement of Sulpicius Severus, that the earliest martyrs in Gaul were under the reign of Aurelius (Sacr. Hist. ii. 46), i.e. after 160; and from the circumstance that neither the old martyrologies nor the old French chroniclers contain any hint of the identity of the two. Gregory of Tours (Hist. Franc. i. 30) fixes the coming of St. Denys into France as late as the reign of Decius, i.e. after 250; while Usuardus, who wrote his Martyrologium for Charlemagne, assigned Oct. 3 to the memory of the Areopagite, and Oct. 9 to that of the patron saint of France. The reasons for believing St. Denys of France to be the author of these writings are equally slight. Their style and subject-matter all betoken a philosophic leisure, not the active life of a missionary in a barbarous country; and a residence in the East is implied in the very titles of those to whom they are addressed. It is the opinion of Bardenhewer (Patrol. p. 538) that the writings of Stiglmayr and Koch (see under Authorities, infra) have proved "that the Areopagitica were nothing more than a composition written under an assumed name, and in reality dating from about the end of the fifth century."

We may deal with the writings under: (1) External History; (2) Nature and Contents.

(1) It is generally admitted that the first unequivocal mention of them is in the records of the conference at Constantinople in 532. The emperor Justinian invited Hypatius of Ephesus, and other bishops of the orthodox side, to meet in his palace the leaders of the Severians. During the debate, these alleged writings of the Areopagite were brought forward by the latter in support of their Monophysite views; and the objections of Hypatius have been preserved. If genuine, he asked, how could they have escaped the notice of Cyril and others? (Mansi, viii. col. 821); and this question has never been satisfactorily answered. Supposed traces of them have been pointed out in Origen; and other ingenious reasons, explaining their concealment for five centuries, have been confuted again and again. Still, whatever their parentage, they are henceforward never lost sight of. Writers of the school which had at first objected to them soon found how serviceable to their own cause they might be made. Thus a chain of testimony begins to be attached to them in unbroken continuity.

In the Western church we first find them mentioned by pope Gregory the Great (c. 590) ; but his manner of citing them makes it probable that he only knew them by report. In any case, they did not become generally known in the West till after 827, when Michael the Stammerer sent a copy to Louis