St. Dionysius of Alexandria: Letters and Treatises

TRANSLATIONS OF CHRISTIAN LITERATURE SERIES I GREEK TEXTS
ST. DIONYSIUS OF ALEXANDRIA
TRANSLATION OF CHRISTIAN LITERATURE. SERIES I GREEK TEXTS
By CHARLES LETT FELTOE, D.D.
SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. London The Macmillan Company. New York
Not long after my edition of this Father’s writings appeared in the Cambridge Patristic Texts (1904), I was invited to translate the Letters and some of the other more certainly genuine fragments that remain into English for the present series; but it is not until now that I have been able to accomplish the task I then undertook. Since then, though chiefly occupied in other researches, I have naturally acquired a more extensive and accurate knowledge of St. Dionysius and his times, some of the results of which will be found in this volume. Nevertheless, I was bound to incorporate a considerable amount of the information and conclusions arrived at in the former work, and wish to express my acknowledgments to the Syndics of the University Press for leave to do so, as well as to those again whose names I mentioned as having assisted me before.
In the present book Dr. A. J. Mason was kind enough to advise me over the choice of extracts from the two treatises, On Nature and Refutation and Defence , and on one or two minor points, while a friend and neighbour (the Rev. L. Patterson) read through the whole of the MS. before it went to the printer and gave me the benefit of a fresh mind upon a number of small details of style and fact, for which I sincerely thank him.
C. L. Feltoe.
Ripple by Dover
March 1918.
3. He was probably a priest, and not less than thirty, when he became head of the Catechetical School in 231, and in 264 he excused himself from attendance at the Council of Antioch on the ground of age and infirmity; and so it is a safe inference that he was born about or before 200, being thus nearly of an age with Cyprian of Carthage, and only ten or fifteen years younger than Origen, his master.