St. Dionysius of Corinth

quotes from Dionysius of Corinth:→

Dionysius was the bishop of Corinth in about the year 171. When Hegesippus traveled to Corinth in 150 AD, he stated that Primus was Bishop of Corinth during the time of Pope Anicetus. During the time of the Paschal controversy from about 190-8, Bacchylus was Bishop of Corinth.  Dionysius was Bishop between these periods with the date of 171 established by the fact that he wrote a letter in that year to Pope St Soter, who was Pope from around 168 to 176.  Dionysius speaks of the recent martyrdom of their bishop, Publius, during the persecution of Marcus Aurelius, and says that Dionysius the Areopagite (Acts 17:34) was the first Bishop of Athens.

Letter to Pope Soter:

Below is the surviving fragments of Dionysius of Corinth’s Letter to Pope Soter as translated by Marcus Dods and George Reith. From Ante-Nicene FathersVol. 1. Edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885.


I.

For this has been your custom from the beginning, to do good to all the brethren in various ways, and to send resources to many churches which are in every city, thus refreshing the poverty of the needy, and granting subsidies to the brethren who are in the mines. Through the resources which ye have sent from the beginning, ye Romans, keep up the custom of the Romans handed down by the fathers, which your blessed Bishop Sorer has not only preserved, but added to, sending a splendid gift to the saints, and exhorting with blessed words those brethren who go up to Rome, as an affectionate father his children.

II.

From the same epistle.

We passed this holy Lord’s day, in which we read your letter, from the constant reading of which we shall be able to draw admonition, even as from the reading of the former one you sent us written through Clement.

III.

From the same.

Therefore you also have by such admonition joined in close union the churches that were planted by Peter and Paul, that of the Romans and that of the Corinthians: for both of them went to our Corinth, and taught us in the same way as they taught you when they went to Italy; and having taught you, they suffered martyrdom at the same time.

IV.

From the same.

For I wrote letters when the brethren requested me to write. And these letters the apostles of the devil have filled with tares, taking away some things and adding others, for whom a woe is in store. It is not wonderful, then, if some have attempted to adulterate the Lord’s writings, when they have formed designs against those which are not such.