Concluding Remarks

25. The foregoing sketch is sufficient to show that, as a man of action and a ruler of the Church, Dionysius’s 32 personality is no less striking than as a student, a writer and a thinker. He was clearly a strong yet conciliatory administrator of his province as Bishop of Alexandria, just as he had been a competent and successful teacher and director of sacred studies as head of the Catechetical Schools—one who in each capacity carried on and maintained the great traditions which he inherited from S. Mark and his successors, from Pantænus, Clement and Origen. And not only at home and within his own jurisdiction, as we have seen, did he worthily “magnify his office” and “make full proof of his ministry”; for he made his influence for good felt throughout Christendom. Bishops and clergy from all parts naturally turned to him in their difficulties for advice and guidance; and it is impossible not to feel that his wonderful breadth of judgment and his love of conciliation were of the greatest value to the Church of the third century, and will remain a model for imitation to each succeeding age. Men will always be tempted, as they were in that century, to speak strongly and to act vehemently where their spiritual beliefs are involved, and we may pray that God will never fail to raise up amongst the rulers of His Church men of the type of S. Denys the Great of Alexandria.