DIONYSIUS, Bishop of Corinth, Saint. - Contemporary of Pope Soter (before 175). Author of seven "Catholic Epistles" (encyclical letters) addressed to the faithful in Lacedaemonia, Athens, Nicomedia, Gortyna (Crete), Amasis (Pontus), Knossos (Crete) and Rome. Eusebius knew a collection of the Epistles of D., which also contained the reply letter of Bishop Pinytus of Knossos (Eusebius, Hist. eccl., IV, 3). Outside the collection there still existed a letter to a certain Chrysophora. The collection of D.'s epistles was already composed during the bishop's lifetime, because in a sentence, cited by Eusebius, D. complains of the falsification of his letters by heretics. These were probably Marcionites (ibid., IV, 23, 12).

Besides the Marcionites, D. also fought the Montanists. The question of Christian asceticism interested him; but, whereas Pinytus was more rigorist, D. advised caution and not to demand too much of the faithful with regard to the consilia evangelica. In the letter to Soter of Rome, D. gives a splendid eulogy of the charitable activity of the Christians at Rome and recalls that the epistle of Clement to the Corinthians was still, in his times, publicly read in the religious service of the church of Corinth. Feast on 8 April.

Bibliography3 works

BIBL.: Acta SS. Ianuarii, I, Paris, pp. 742-45; Bardenhewer, I, 532-34; Martyrol. Romanum, p. 130.

Erik Peterson

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Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth, Saint

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