Dioscorus of Alexandria

“ S. Proterius was the head of the orthodox party at Alexandria, when the patriarch Dioscorus adopted Eutychian views. That unprincipled and haughty prelate, knowing the esteem in which Proterius was held, made him arch-priest of his diocese; but as his heretical opinions became more evident, Proterius took decided steps to oppose him, and on the condemnation and deposition of Dioscorus by the Council of Chalcedon, in 452, he was ordained in his room. This led to a schism in the Church of Alexandria, the Catholics acknowledging Proterius, and the Eutychians holding with Dioscorus. ”

“ And when they had taken Saint Dioscoros to that place, there came upon him great tribulation through the bishop of that district, for he was a Nestorian. And he treated him with great contempt until God performed by the hands of Saint Abba Dioscoros signs and mighty wonders, and all [the people] bowed down at his feet, and were subject unto him, and they magnified his greatness. Thus God honors His chosen ones in every place. And Abba Dioscoros said unto Abba Macarius, “Thou shalt receive the crown of martyrdom in the city of Alexandria” ”

“ Consistentes, 60 Copts (Egyptians) , 10, 39, 66, 70, 73 Coracion, converted from heresy, 84 Cornelia Salonina, 14, 69 Cornelius, Bishop of Rome, 15, 51 Cronion Eunous, a martyr, 38 Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, 9, 11, 15, 55, 58 Damascus, John of, 9, 75 Decius, Persecution of, 13 f., 39, 43, 65 Demetrianus, Bishop of Antioch, 52 Demetrius, Bishop of Alexandria, 11 Democritus quoted, 25, 28, 99 Dionysia, a martyr, 39 Dionysius, Bishop of Rome, 19 f., 58 f., 103 Dionysius, church dedicated to St., 31 Dioscorus, a presbyter, 64 a boy confessor, 39 Domitius and Didymus, letter to, 63 f. ”

“ The archimandrite Eutyches (q.v.) having been deposed by his bishop, Flavianus of Constantinople, on account of his heterodox doctrine of the person of Christ, had appealed to Dioscurus, the successor of Cyril in the see of Alexandria, who restored him and moved the emperor Theodosius II. to summon a council, which should “utterly destroy Nestorianism.” Rome recognizing that she had more to fear from Alexandria, departed from her traditional policy and sided with Constantinople. The council of 130 bishops, which convened on the 8th of August 449, was completely dominated by Dioscurus. ”

“ But to silence an obnoxious party is not to convert it. The death of the emperor, in January 457, was the signal for an outbreak of violence by the followers of Dioscurus against his successor Proterius and the orthodox Alexandrians. Timothy, nicknamed Ælurus—"the Cat"—one of the presbyters of Dioscurus, who had been deposed and banished to Lybia, now returned secretly to Alexandria, and crept about at night, cat-like, visiting the cells of ignorant monks. ”

“ At Antioch Domnus became bishop in 442, at Alexandria Dioscurus in 444, and at Constantinople Flavian in 446. Early in 448 Dioscurus, who aimed at the domination of the East, began to attack the Antiochians as Nestorians. In this he was supported at Constantinople by Chrysaphius, the all-powerful minister of the weak Theodosius II, and the archimandrite Eutyches, the godfather of the minister. Eusebius of Dorylæum thereupon accused Eutyches, who held the Alexandrian position in an extreme form, of being heretical on the doctrine of the Incarnation. ”

“ In the last year of his reign Dionysius tells Fabius, Bishop of Antioch (p. 35) , that “the prophet and poet of evil to this city, whoever he was,” stirred up the populace against the Christians in Alexandria, and several persons were [13] cruelly martyred. This reign of terror lasted some time, but was interrupted in the autumn of 249 by the revolution which caused the deposition and death of Philip, and which set Decius on the throne in his stead. The respite was only too brief, for by the beginning of the new year the edict which Decius had issued was being actively carried into effect. ”

“ The rights of provincial primates may not be overthrown, nor metropolitan bishops be defrauded of privileges based on antiquity. The see of Alexandria may not lose any of that dignity which it merited through St. Mark, the evangelist and disciple of the blessed Peter, nor may the splendor of so great a church be obscured by another's clouds, when Dioscurus fell through his persistence in impiety. ”

“ They are mentioned by Eusebius as the opponents of Origen, and their accusation of Origen implies their own heresy. “Whereas,” they said, “the sacred Scriptures testify that God has eyes, ears, hands, and feet, as men have, the partisans of Dioscorus, being followers of Origen, introduce the blasphemous dogma that God has not a body.” The Anthropomorphite error was common among the monks of Egypt about the end of the fourth century. Dioscorus was a leader of the opposite party.
ANTICHRIST. The man of sin, who is to precede the second advent of our blessed Saviour Jesus Christ. ”

“ Cyril’s wild black army filled the streets, “human only in their faces,” and anxious to perform some crowning piety before they retired to their monasteries. In this mood they encountered Hypatia who was driving from a lecture (probably along the course of the present Rue Nebi Daniel) , dragged her from the carriage to the Caesareum, and there tore her to pieces with tiles. She is not a great figure. But with her the Greece that is a spirit expired—the Greece that tried to discover truth and create beauty and that had created Alexandria. ”

“ Decius’s reversal of his predecessor’s policy towards the Christians was probably due to reasons of state and expediency rather than, as Eusebius implies, to mere spite and hatred of Philip and all his ways. Anyhow, the severity of the Decian persecution is undoubted, and it fell with great force upon the Church at Alexandria. The Prefect of Egypt, Sabinus, lost no time in attacking Dionysius and his followers. Many endured tortures or death, or both. ”

“ And Diocletian was afraid of him, and commanded the soldiers to take him to the country of Egypt, together with Theocleia his wife, and Aboli his son. And thus he sent them to the country of Egypt. And he commanded the governor of the city of Alexandria to persuade him quietly, and not to cause him vexation of heart, for, he said, peradventure his heart will turn, and he will be submissive to the emperor; and if his heart doth not turn, separate him not from his wife and his son. ”

“ Starting with the heroic figure of Alexander the Great, it inspects the dynasty of the Ptolemies, and in particular the career of the last of them, Cleopatra; an account of Ptolemaic literature and science follows, and closes this splendid period, to which I have given the title of “Greco-Egyptian.” The second period, called “Christian”, begins with the rule of Rome, and traces the fortunes of Christianity, first as a persecuted and then as a persecuting power: all is lost in 641, when the Patriarch Cyrus betrays Alexandria to the Arabs. ”

“ No men of learning in Alexandria were more famous than the physicians. Erasistratus of Cos had the credit of having once cured Antiochus, afterwards King of Syria. He was the grandson of Aristotle, and may be called the father of the science of anatomy: his writings are often quoted by Dioscorides. Antiochus in his youth had fallen deeply in love with his young stepmother, and was pining away in silence and despair. Erasistratus found out the cause of his illness, which was straightway cured by Seleucus giving up his wife to his own son. ”

“ The Temple of Serapis.
The idea that one religion is false and another true is essentially Christian, and had not occurred to the Egyptians and Greeks who were living together at Alexandria. Each worshipped his own gods, just as he spoke his own language, but he never thought that the gods of his neighbour had no existence, and he was willing to believe that they might be his own gods under another name. The Greeks in particular held this view and had already identified Osiris, god of the world beyond death, with their Dionysus, who was a god of mysteries and also of wine. ”

“ Among ancient texts on physiognomy, however, perhaps the most famous was the Sirr-el-asrar, or Secreta Secretorum, which was ascribed to Aristotle. Its origin, like that of other pseudo-Aristotelic writings, seems to have been Egyptian. When the conquests of Alexander the Great had opened the way for a new relation between East and West, Egypt, and especially its capital, Alexandria, became the focus of a new philosophic influence. ”

“ Fifteen hundred years ago, in Alexandria, when our religion was both young and lusty, it attempted to, and succeeded in, destroying everything that reminded the world of the glory and liberty of ancient Rome and Greece. ”

“ This was very unlike Ptolemy, who was a wise, clear-headed man, with much of Alexander’s spirit of teaching and improving people under him, and who ruled so as to make himself much beloved in Egypt, Cyprus, Rhodes, and Palestine. The new city of Alexandria was his capital, and under him and his son Ptolemy Philadelphus it grew to be a great merchant city, and also a school of art, science, and philosophy almost as famous as Athens, and with a library containing all the chief books in the world, including the Old Testament. ”

“ And the rest, after their bodies had been lacerated in a most savage manner, and their stedfastness had nevertheless been maintained, he consigned also to the flames. But Dioscorus he dismissed, wondering at the distinguished appearance he had made in public, and at the extreme wisdom of the answers he gave to his interrogations, and declaring that, on account of his age, he granted him further time for repentance. And this most godly Dioscorus is with us at present, tarrying for a greater conflict and a more lengthened contest. ”

“ Alexander occupied Pharos, and had a walled city marked out by Deinocrates on the mainland to include Rhacotis. A few months later he left Egypt for the East and never returned to his city; but his corpse was ultimately entombed there. His viceroy, Cleomenes, continued the creation of Alexandria. The Heptastadium, however, and the mainland quarters seem to have been mainly Ptolemaic work. Inheriting the trade of ruined Tyre and becoming the centre of the new commerce between Europe and the Arabian and Indian East, the city grew in less than a century to be larger than Carthage ”

“ Love, mythological fancies, decorative treatment—he liked these things too, but he backed them with a width of experience and a zest for it that Callimachus and Apollonius never knew. While they are “Classics” who have to be studied, Theocritus appeals to us at once; his Fifteenth Idyll, describing life in the Greek Quarter at Alexandria, is as vivid now as when he wrote it. The dialogue with which it opens can be heard to-day in any of the little drawing rooms of Camp de César or Ibrahimieh. Praxinoe, a lady of the middle classes, is discovered seated, doing nothing in particular. ”

“ It is natural that so remote a community should lose touch with the theological niceties of the capital, and in 399 the Patriarch Theophilus was obliged to rebuke the monks for minimising the divine element in the Second Person. Their reply was startling. They crossed the desert, stormed Alexandria, and made the Patriarch apologise. A few years later he led an army into the Wady to punish them, but by now, oddly enough, they had veered to the opposite error; they minimised the human element. The truth is they represented native Egypt, the Patriarch the Hellenising coast. ”

“ The first Ptolemy began it, and the second completed it, at a total cost of 800 talents. It is the prototype of all lighthouses (q.v.) in the world. A temple of Hephaestus also stood on Pharos at the head of the mole. In the Augustan age the population of Alexandria was estimated at 300,000 free folk, in addition to an immense number of slaves.
III. History.—Founded in 332 B.C. by Alexander the Great, Alexandria was intended to supersede Naucratis (q.v.) as a Greek centre in Egypt, and to be the link between Macedonia and the rich Nile Valley. ”

“ During the first three years of the reign of Heraclius, Theodoras was Bishop of Alexandria; but upon his death the wishes of the Alexandrians so strongly pointed to John, the son of the prefect of Cyprus, that the emperor, yielding to their request, appointed him to the bishopric. Alexandria was not a place in which a good man could enjoy the pleasures of power without feeling the weight of its duties. It was then suffering under all those evils which usually befall the capital of a sinking state. It had lost much of its trade, and its poorer citizens no longer received a free supply of grain. ”

“ But see where comes from Alexandria (for we need not be very solicitous about anachronisms) , a young man from twenty to twenty-two, who has narrowly escaped drowning on his voyage, and is to remain at Athens as many as eight or ten years, yet in the course of that time will not learn a line of Latin, thinking it enough to become accomplished in Greek composition, and in that he will succeed. He is a grave person, and difficult to make out; some say he is a Christian, something or other in the Christian line his father is for certain. ”

“ The inferior officers must have fulfilled their duties more faithfully than their superiors or the whole land would have been plunged in anarchy and destruction. The laws were administered, industry and commerce flourished, and Alexandria continued to be a large, populous and busy city, full of life and animation and adorned with many magnificent buildings. The Pharos steadily cast its beneficent light across the waters to be a guide to mariners; the Temple of Serapis, on its high platform, called attention to the worship of the gods ”