Saint Dionysius, Pope

Nothing is known of his birth. ¹ katolsk.no thinks he was probably Greek and says he had once been a hermit; the Liber Pontificalis calls him "previously a monk, whose family we have not been able to ascertain." ²⁸ By the 250s he was a leading presbyter of the Roman Church. ¹²

He first appears in the letters of his namesake, Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, during the quarrel between Pope Stephen I and Cyprian of Carthage over whether converts baptized by heretics must be baptized again. ¹⁵ The Alexandrian wrote on the question to "our beloved fellow presbyters, Dionysius and Philemon, who formerly had held the same opinion as Stephen." ⁵ Eusebius, who kept the letters, says the fourth of them was addressed to Dionysius of Rome, "who was then a presbyter, but not long after received the episcopate of that church," and that the bishop of Alexandria plainly thought him "a learned and admirable man." ⁵ Later, under Pope Sixtus II, Dionysius received another letter from Alexandria, about a certain Lucian whom nobody can now identify. ¹⁵

katolsk.no adds that the future pope at first shared Stephen's hard line, breaking communion with churches that rebaptized, but seems to have softened under Sixtus. ²

Sixtus II was martyred on August 6, 258. ¹² Kirsch says the violence of the persecution then made it impossible to elect anyone, and the see was vacant for nearly a year; katolsk.no adds that all seven deacons had died with Sixtus, so the presbyters governed the Church alone. ¹² Dionysius was raised to the office, Kirsch says, on July 22, 259, once the persecution had begun to subside, and the Holy See gives the same date. ¹⁴ katolsk.no notes a different view: that Rome waited for news that Valerian had been captured by the Persians, and elected Dionysius on July 22, 260. ² Butler has July 2, 259. ⁹

Valerian's son Gallienus stopped the persecution and allowed the bishops to take back their places of worship and, by a further decree, "the so-called cemeteries." ⁵ Kirsch says the edict gave the Church a legal existence, and that Dionysius used the peace to bring the Roman Church's administration back into order. ¹ The Liber Pontificalis records the result in one sentence: "He assigned churches and cemeteries to the priests and appointed parishes in the diocese." ⁸ Loomis, its translator, follows Duchesne in reading this as the parish organization of the city, with each church given its own cemetery, and the boundaries of the dioceses around Rome drawn. ⁸ katolsk.no, which describes the same work, calls Dionysius one of the most important Roman bishops of the third century. ²

Around 260 the bishop of Alexandria wrote against the Sabellians, who taught that the Father and the Son were one person under two names. ¹ In pressing the distinction he expressed himself, Kirsch says, "with inexactness" about the Word and the Father, and some Christians of Alexandria reported him to Rome for treating the Son as a creature. ¹² Dionysius called a synod at Rome, which condemned Sabellius again, and issued a doctrinal letter in his own name and the council's. ¹

Athanasius copied part of it into his defense of Nicaea a century later. The pope rebuked those who "divide and cut to pieces and destroy that most sacred doctrine of the Church of God, the Divine Monarchy, making it as it were three powers and partitive subsistences and god-heads three." ⁶ With equal force he turned on those who called the Son a work: "A blasphemy then is it, not ordinary, but even the highest, to say that the Lord is in any sort a handiwork." ⁶ His conclusion held both truths together: "thus both the Divine Triad, and the holy preaching of the Monarchy, will be preserved." ⁶

With the public letter went a private one, asking his brother bishop to explain himself; katolsk.no calls it tactful. ¹² Dionysius of Alexandria answered with an Apologia, made clear he was no tritheist, and the matter seems to have ended there. ¹² Butler records Athanasius's testimony that the bishops at Nicaea, defending the faith, used expressions they had received from earlier pastors, especially from Dionysius of Rome and his namesake of Alexandria. ⁹ katolsk.no calls the exchange a prelude to Nicaea and the Arian crisis. ²

The Roman Church had long helped Christians in distress far from Rome, and Dionysius kept it up. ¹² When raiders sacked Caesarea in Cappadocia and carried off its people, he wrote to console the church there and sent messengers with a large sum to buy the captives back. ¹⁹ Kirsch says the raiders were Goths; katolsk.no says Persians. ¹²

More than a century later Basil the Great, by then bishop of that same Caesarea, wrote to Pope Damasus asking for help in a new crisis and reminded him of it. "The illustrious and blessed bishop Dionysius, conspicuous in your see as well for soundness of faith as for all other virtues," Basil wrote, "visited by letter my Church of Caesarea, and by letter exhorted our fathers, and sent men to ransom our brethren from captivity." ⁷ The current Martyrology sums up the same years: after Valerian's persecution he consoled the afflicted with his letters and his presence, redeemed prisoners from their torments, and taught the foundations of the faith to those who did not know them. ³

The last time he appears in the record, he is being written to. A synod at Antioch deposed its bishop, Paul of Samosata, who taught that Christ was not truly God, and sent its circular letter to "Dionysius, bishop of Rome, and Maximus of Alexandria." ²⁵ katolsk.no doubts the pope ever received it, since he died at the end of 268. ² Eusebius says Dionysius died after nine years in office and was succeeded by Felix. ⁵

He was buried in the papal crypt of the Catacomb of Callistus on the Via Appia. ¹² katolsk.no is firm that, whatever later tradition said, he was not a martyr: the Liberian catalog of 354 places him among the bishops buried and not among the martyrs. ² The Liber Pontificalis, in Loomis's translation, records his burial without any martyrdom, and the 1897 English Martyrology entered his "decease" on the Appian Way. ⁸¹⁰ The nineteenth-century portrait at the top of this page still labels him "M.," for martyr.

None of the sources consulted names a patronage for Saint Dionysius. ¹²³ The Martyrology remembers him for consoling the afflicted and redeeming prisoners, and Basil for the ransom he sent. ³⁷

Saint Dionysius's feast day is December 26. ²³ The current Roman Martyrology, as the Italian bishops print it, commemorates him that day at the Catacomb of Callistus on the Via Appia, among the saints who follow the feast of Saint Stephen the protomartyr. ³ The 1897 English Martyrology also entered him on December 26, as did Butler. ⁹¹⁰ Kirsch gives his death as December 26 or 27, 268; the Liber Pontificalis puts his burial on December 27. ¹⁸

He was chosen for a Church that had just watched its bishop and deacons killed and had gone a year without a bishop because no one could safely meet to elect one. ¹² His work was not dramatic. He sorted out which priest had which church and which cemetery, and drew the boundaries of the dioceses around Rome. ⁸

He was also asked to judge a greater theologian than himself, and he did it in two letters: a public one that said clearly what the Church believes, and a private one that asked a brother bishop what he had meant. ¹² katolsk.no says the bishop of Alexandria died at peace with the Church. ²

Basil remembered him for what he sent. When Caesarea's people were in captivity, the bishop of Rome sent men with money to bring them home, and a hundred years later the church that had been helped still told the story. ⁷