Free English Translation
Fragment of a Letter to Dionysius, Then a Presbyter of Rome and Afterwards Its Bishop
Epistola ad Dionysium Presbyterum Fragmentum
~1 min read · by Dionysius of Alexandria
About Fragment of a Letter to Dionysius, Then a Presbyter of Rome and Afterwards Its Bishop
This short fragment preserves part of a letter from Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, to Dionysius, then a presbyter of Rome under Pope Sixtus II and later his successor as bishop, likely written in the later 250s AD. In it, Dionysius of Alexandria denounces Novatian for tearing the church apart and drawing others into what he calls impious and blasphemous teaching about God, for slandering Christ's mercy, and for rejecting baptism along with the faith and confession that precede it. He warns that this rejection drives the Holy Spirit away from such persons, even where hope remains that it once dwelt in them or might yet return. The fragment offers a rare direct glimpse of how the Novatianist schism was viewed from Alexandria.
By Dionysius of Alexandria, bishop of Alexandria and pupil of Origen. Collected in Patrologia Latina, Volume 5.
Fragment of a Letter to Dionysius, at That Time Presbyter of Xystus, and Afterwards His Successor
For we rightly turn away from Novatian, who rent the Church asunder, and drew certain of the brethren into impiety and blasphemies; who introduced into the world a most impious doctrine concerning God, and slanders our most merciful Lord Jesus Christ as though He were without mercy; and besides all this, holds the sacred washing as void and rejects it, subverts the faith and confession which are required before baptism, and utterly drives the Holy Spirit away from those persons, even if there be some hope that He either remained in them or returned to them.
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