On Dionysius the Areopagite and the Writings Supposedly Attributed to Him Against Gottfried Arnold

sent into Gaul by Pope Fabian in the year 252, and beheaded in the same year. See Gerb. du Bois in Eccl. Hist. Paris. Book VI, ch. 5 & 6. Certainly, a much greater number of writers exist who, even if they do not contend that this Parisian Dionysius is the same as Dionysius the Areopagite, nevertheless confuse them badly when they claim that the Areopagite moved from Athens to Rome and was sent by Pope Clement of Rome to convert the Gauls, that he was the first of all to preside over the Parisian Church, and was finally killed by the sword under the Emperor Hadrian in the 2nd Century by the Prefect Fescenninus. Among the patrons of this opinion, Hilduin, Abbot of the monastery of St. Denys—which is still very celebrated in Gaul—and a writer of the 9th Century, easily claims the first place for himself. Many ancients and moderns alike have followed him in a great troop, especially Pontifical Roman Catholic authors, a sufficiently accurate catalog of whom is provided by Martin Hank in his book On the Greek Writers of Byzantine Affairs, Part I, Ch. XXIV, §. 143, p. 454. But, to omit those who noted this error incidentally and when given the occasion, the Jesuit Jac. Sirmond confuted the same in a separate book in a dissertation in which the difference between Dionysius of Paris and Dionysius the Areopagite is shown (Paris, 1641), and that honest confessor of Roman tales, Jo. Launoy, in an opusculum small work On the Two Dionysii (Paris, 1660). In the same 3rd Century, DIONYSIUS, first a Presbyter, afterwards BISHOP OF ALEXANDRIA, flourished, dying around the year 265. Cave (op. cit. p. 95) records his extant and partially lost treatises and epistles in a long series. Contemporary with him is DIONYSIUS, Bishop and Pope of ROME, who died five years after