DIONYSIUS THE SMALL. - A Scythian monk, moribus omnino Romanis, who, in order to supply the deficiencies of the various translations of the Greek canons that had been circulating in the West since the middle of the 5th century, composed in Rome, between 498 and 514, a collection designated by the name Collectio Conciliorum Dionysiana prima; in it he included the Greek canons of the Syntagma down to the Council of Chalcedon, added the canons of Sardica, those of the Council of Carthage of 425, and finally the canons of the Apostles. Upon the discovery of a better manuscript of the canons of Carthage, D. decided to make a second redaction of his collection, Collectio Conciliorum Dionysiana altera, and introduced further modifications into the text of the preceding one; finally, at the request of Pope Hormisdas, he made a third, Collectio Conciliorum Dionysiana tertia.
It had long been believed that D. the L. was the first to gather the decretals of the Roman Pontiffs into a collection; but Maassen had already pointed out traces of earlier collections, and various hypotheses have been advanced concerning them by Duchesne, by Massigli, and recently by C. Silva-Tarouca and by Wurm.
D. assembled in another collection, which may be called Collectio Dionysiana decretalis, 38 decretals of the popes from Siricius (384) to Anastasius II (498); the decretals give answers to various consultations addressed to the pontiffs concerning Bap-
Baptism, Orders, Penance, heretics, secular jurisdiction and liturgical usages.
The Dionysian collections, united into a single collection, subsequently took different forms, such as the Dionysiana Bobiensis, down to the celebrated transmission of the Dionysiana made by Pope Adrian to Charlemagne in 774, the Dionysio-hadriana, which contains the same material as the Dionysiana, plus material of its own, the Collectio Dionysio-hadriana cum mutationibus, the Collectio Dionysio-hadriana aucta. Extracts were also made from them: Breviarium ad quaerendum sententias infra, Epitome Hadriani.
To D. the L. is also due the introduction of the Christian era (v. ERA), used by him in the compilation of the table of paschal cycles which he made in continuation of that of Cyril of Alexandria.