Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/863

 Laus. 121). They left Rome in 408, when the siege by Alaric was impending. Melania the elder having died at Bethlehem, they inherited her vast estates. They were intent on doing good and are said to have liberated 8,000 slaves (ib. 119). After the sack of Rome in 410 they settled in Africa at Tagaste with bp. Alypius and desired to meet Augustine. He immediately wrote to welcome them (Ep. 124), but was unable to come to them, so they went with Alypius to Hippo. There the strange scene, so instructive as to the church life of the period, occurred, which is recounted by Augustine (Ep. 126). The clergy and people of Hippo, knowing their wealth, determined that they should, by the ordination of Pinianus, become attached to their church and city. A tumult was raised in the church, and though Augustine refused to ordain a man against his will, he was unable, or not firm enough, to resist the violence of the people, who extracted from Pinianus a promise that he would not leave Hippo nor be ordained in any other church. Next day, however, fearing further violence, he, with Melania and her mother Albina, returned to Tagaste. Some rather acrimonious correspondence ensued between them and Augustine (Ep. 125–128). Alypius considered that a promise extorted by violence was not valid, Augustine demanded that it should be fulfilled; and the controversy lasted until, by the rapacity of the rebel count Heraclian, Pinianus was robbed of his property, and the people of Hippo no longer cared to enforce the promise. Being now free, though poor, Pinianus, with his wife and mother-in-law, went to Egypt, saw the monasteries of the Thebaid, and thence to Palestine, settling at Bethlehem. On the appearance of the Pelagian controversy, their letters to Augustine induced him to write ( 417) his book on grace and original sin. We only hear of Pinianus after this in a letter of Jerome in 419, in which he, Albina, and Melania, salute Augustine and Alypius. Hieron. Ep. cxliii. 2, ed. Vall.; Aug. ''de Grat. Christi'', ii. and xxxii.

[W.H.F.]

Pionius, martyr at Smyrna, in the Decian persecution, Mar. 12, 250. It was probably this Pionius who revived the cultus of in Smyrna, by recovering an ancient MS. martyrdom of that saint and fixing the day of commemoration in accordance with it.

When taken to prison, Pionius and his companions, Asclepiades and Sabina, found there already another Catholic presbyter, named Lemnus, and a Montanist woman named Macedonia. The divisions of the Christian community were now well known to their persecutors for in the examinations of the martyrs those who owned themselves Christians were always further interrogated as to what church or sect they belonged. The Acts give a long report of exhortations delivered by Pionius to his fellow-prisoners. With Pionius suffered a Marcionite presbyter Metrodorus, the stakes of both being turned to the east, Pionius on the right, Metrodorus on the left. The Acts are important on account of their undoubted antiquity. We only know them by a Latin translation, of which two types are extant—one which seems more faithfully to represent the original, published by Surius and reprinted by the Bollandists (Feb. 1); the other by Ruinart (Acta Sincera, p. 137). The common original was certainly read by Eusebius, who (H. E. iv. 15) gives a description of the Acts of Pionius which agrees too often with those extant for different Acts to be intended. Eusebius, however, represents Pionius as suffering at the same time as Polycarp, while the extant Acts place him a century later, a date attested by the Paschal Chronicle, which makes Pionius suffer in the Decian persecution, and confirmed by internal evidence. On the Life of Polycarp ascribed to Pionius, see. Cf. Zahn, ''Forschungen zur Gesch. der N.T. Kanons'', iv. 271.

[G.S.]

Pius I., bp. of Rome after Hyginus in the middle part of 2nd cent. The dates cannot be fixed with certainty, the traditions being contradictory. The Liberian Catalogue and the Felician both name Antoninus Pius (138–161) as the contemporary emperor, as does Eusebius (H. E. iv. 11). Lipsius (Chronol. der röm. Bischöf.), after full discussion of the chronology, assigns from 139 to 154 as the earliest, and from 141 to 156 as the latest, tenable dates. The absence of distinct early records of the early Roman bishops is further shewn by the fact that both the Liberian and Felician Catalogues place Anicetus between Hyginus and Pius. So also Optatus (ii. 48) and Augustine (Ep. 53, ordo novus). But that the real order was Hyginus, Pius, Anicetus, may be considered certain from the authority of Hegesippus (quoted by Eus. H. E. iv. 22), who was at Rome himself in the time of Anicetus, and, when there, made out a succession of the Roman bishops. Irenaeus, who visited Rome in the time of Eleutherus, gives the same order (adv. Haer. iii. 3; cf. Eus. iv. 1; v. 24; Epipb. adv. Haer. xxvii. 6).

The episcopate of Pius is important for the introduction of Gnostic heresy into Rome. The heresiarchs Valentinus and Cerdo had come thither in the time of Hyginus and continued to teach there under Pius (Iren. i. 27, ii. 4; cf. Eus. H. E. iv. 11). Marcion of Pontus, who took up the teaching of Cerdo and developed from it his own peculiar system, arrived there after the death of Hyginus (Epiph. Haer. xlii. 1; cf. Eus. H. E. iv. 11).

Pius, according to the  (c. 170) and the Liberian Catalogue, was brother to, the writer of the Shepherd. Lipsius (op. cit.) considers this relationship established. Westcott (Canon of N. T. pt. i. c. 2) accepts it, and adduces internal evidence in the work of Hermas itself.

Those who maintain the view of the presbyterian constitution of the early Roman church, and of the earliest so-called bishops having been in fact only leading presbyters, to whom a distinct episcopal office was afterwards assigned by way of tracing the succession, would attribute the development of the later episcopal system to the age of Pius, Thus Lipsius speaks of him as the first bishop in the stricter sense ("Bischof im engeren Sinn"). He supposes both Hyginus and Pius to have presided over the college of presbyters, though only as primi inter pares, and the need of a recognized head of the church to resist Gnostic teachers to have led to the