Bibliography

26. The first attempt at making a full collection of our author’s remains was undertaken by Simon de Magistris, whose edition was published at Rome in 1796. Routh (Reliquiæ Sacræ, tom. iii. and iv.; Oxford, 1846) and Migne (Patr. Græc. tom. x.) published considerable portions with Latin notes, while Gallandius (Bibliotheca vett. patrum, app. to vol. xiv.), 33 Pitra, Mai and (more recently) Holl in vol. v. of Texte und Untersuchungen (neue Folge) have printed a number of fragments from various sources and of very varying degrees of probable authenticity.

The earliest list of Dionysius’s literary productions, except the scattered references to be found in the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius, is that of Jerome (de viris illustribus, 69), which more or less tallies with what we gather from Eusebius. The student will, however, find a complete modern list of them, together with other valuable matter, in Harnack, Altchrist. Lit., vol. i. pp. 409-27, and in Bardenhewer, Altkirch. Lit., vol. ii. pp. 167-91: the account in Krüger, Early Christian Literature (Eng. Trans.) is much shorter. Several compositions mentioned by Eusebius and Jerome are only known to us by name, unless some of the short extracts attributed to Dionysius come from one or other of them, and the contents of them are almost wholly matter for conjecture. The most important of these is perhaps the ἐπιστολή διακονικὴ διὰ Ἱππολύτου (Eus., H. E. vi. 45), because of the various theories which have been put forward about it. Dom Morin (Revue Bénédictine, xvii., 1900), for instance, suggested that Rufinus’s translation of the doubtful epithet (διακονική) being de ministeriis, it was none other than the Canons of Hippolytus, and that the Canons were afterwards attributed to the church-writer, Hippolytus, through a mistaken identification of the unknown bearer of Dionysius’s missive with the well-known author; but the theory has not met with much acceptance since, and the discussion has of late died down, quite different views being now held about the Canons of Hippolytus.

It may also be mentioned that several fragments in Syriac and in Armenian are attributed to Dionysius, 34 but only three of these, in the former language, appear to be genuine: one is a translation of the letter to Novatian (p. 50), and the two others are, whether rightly or wrongly, thought to be part of the Letter to Stephanus on Baptism, and will be found as §§ 2 and 3 of it on pp. 53 ff.

The article on Dionysius in Smith’s Dictionary of Christian Biography is by Dr. Westcott, and, though not very full, is, it is needless to say, worthy of being consulted.

Three German books on our author will also be found useful, though not very recent: viz. Förster, de doctrin. et sententiis Dionysii, Berolini, 1865; Dittrich, Dionysius der Grosse, Freiburg, i.B., 1867; and Roch, Dionysius der Grosse über die Natur, Leipzig, 1882. Of these the second is the most important for the general student.

Dr. Salmond produced a serviceable translation of the fragments in 1871 (T. & T. Clark’s series, Edinburgh), and since then we have had Dr. Gifford’s (in his scholarly edition of Eus., Præpar. Evang., Oxford, 1903), of such as there appear.

For the general history of the period much valuable help will be found in Archbishop Benson’s Cyprian, London, 1897; P. Allard, Histoire des Persécutions, vols. ii. and iii., Paris, 1886, and Aubé, L’Eglise et l’Etat dans la 2de moitié du 3me Siècle.

A full collection of all the genuine and doubtful extracts appeared in the series of Cambridge Patristic Texts, with introductions and notes by the present editor, in 1904.