DIOTREPHES. - A figure remembered with reproach in III John 9 ff.
The name (Διοτρεφής) is found in inscriptions and in Greek authors (J. Chaine, p. 256). D. must have been the head of the community to which the recipient of the letter, Gaius (v.), also belonged. John wrote (ἐγραψά τι, "I have written something," rather than ἐγραψά ἄν, "scripsissem forsitan" in the Vulgate) a letter to the community to recommend some itinerant missionaries, sent, perhaps, by John himself: a letter badly received, or even destroyed, by D., who saw in this intervention of the Elder a diminution of his own authority, of which he was extremely jealous. It does not appear that he professed heretical doctrines, nor is it evident that his conduct proves that supposed crisis by which the Christian communities would have passed from the primitive form of collegial government to that of the monarchical episcopate (A. Harnack, Über den dritten Johannesbrief [Texte und Untersuchungen, 15], Leipzig 1897). Φιλοπροστάσιν does not indicate so much the immoderate desire to rise, as being jealous of one's own authority. The reproach directed at D. is not that he had usurped or wished to usurp the first place, but that he held it with a spirit of pride, which drove him to take no account of John's authority, whispering malicious insinuations against him, and to refuse hospitality to the itinerant missionaries, even preventing others from receiving them. On a forthcoming visit the Elder will publicly denounce his conduct.
Bibliography5 works
Teodorico da Castel San Pietro