Dionysius of Alexandria.

        Three men named Dionysius were active and influential in the early church: Dionysius, bishop of Corinth (who was contemporary with Soter, bishop of Rome from A.D. 166 to 174) ; Dionysius, bishop of Rome, A.D. 259-68; and Dionysius the Great, bishop of Alexandria from A.D. 247 to 264, who has been called the most significant of the personal pupils of Origen.

        He came of heathen parentage and was at first a pagan, then a Gnostic; a man of position and means, who stood high with the authorities. When Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria, forced Origen to break off his work there and leave the city (A.D. 230), his assistant Heraclas took his place at the head of the catechetical school, but a year later, A.D. 231, Heraclas became bishop of Alexandria and turned over the direction of the school to Dionysius. When Heraclas died, sixteen years later, Dionysius became bishop in his place but seems to have retained the headship of the school, not unworthily carrying forward the great tradition established for it by Pantaenus, Clement, and Origen.

        Dionysius ably united the practical and intellectual sides of the Christian faith. He was a vigorous churchman of worldwide interests; the problems of Eastern and Western Christianity found him alert and energetic in dealing with them. He corresponded with Rome, Antioch, Laodicea in Phoenicia, Caesarea in Palestine, even Armenia, and concerned himself with questions that arose anywhere in the church, practical, doctrinal, and even critical, and with remarkable sense and skill.

        Dionysius had hardly become bishop of Alexandria when a local persecution broke out there, and the following year the Decian persecution began. Like Cyprian in the same situation at Carthage, Dionysius fled before the storm, or rather he permitted himself to be rescued from the soldiers who had arrested him. It seems that a certain Timothy, a member of his household, perhaps his son, came to Dionysius' house on the way to a wedding, and, seeing what was going on, proceeded to the wedding and told the assembled company what was happening. As one man, they arose from the table, rushed to the bishop's house, put the soldiers to flight, and seizing the astounded Dionysius carried him off by force. Indeed, he thought at first that he was being mobbed or kidnaped. He was hustled upon the back of a saddleless animal and hurried off to a place of safety, where he remained with only two attendants until the death of Decius in 251. It reminds one of the seizure of Luther and his removal to the Wartburg by the emissaries of the Great Elector, for his protection.

        We owe this story to the attack made afterward upon Dionysius for flight by a certain Germanus, which Dionysius answered with a full account of what actually happened (Eusebius Church History vi. 40 and vii. 11), in his Letter to Germanus, written in A.D. 259, in defense of his course in the persecutions of both Decius and Valerian.

        Soon after the death of Decius and the return of Dionysius to Alexandria, the persecution of Valerian broke out and occasioned Dionysius' banishment to obscure places, first in Libya and then in the Mareotis in Egypt. The toleration edict of Gallienus, A.D. 260, made it possible for him to return to Alexandria in 261, but a new series of calamities soon set in. The prefect of Egypt revolted against Gallienus and set himself up as emperor and had to be put down. Famine and pestilence added to the misery of the Alexandrians, and amid such scenes Dionysius died, A.D. 264-65. The new bishop of Antioch, Paul of Samosata, had antagonized the churches by his views on the person of Christ-that he was mere man, though filled with divine power from his birth — and a synod was held in Antioch to settle the matter. Dionysius had been unable to attend but had sent his written opinion to the gathering. Paul was not only bishop of Antioch but also viceroy of Zenobia, the famous queen of Palmyra, who for a time wrested Egypt from the Romans.