Born c.470 in Scythia Minor—a Roman province north of Constantinople, between the Danube and the Black Sea—he was a "true Roman" by inclination (according to Cassiodorus). He was a mathematician and astronomer, a theologian, and was well-versed in canon law. He was fluent in both Greek and Latin. This skill allowed him to translate hundreds of important Greek works into Latin, including the "Life of St. Pachomius." He also translated a history of the discovery of the head of John the Baptist. Some translations attributed to him seem to be the earlier work of Marius Mercator (mentioned previously in a post about forgeries).
He came to Rome when Pope Gelasius I summoned him to organize the papal archives. (Gelasius died 496CE, so Dionysius must have been in Rome by that year.) He translated into Latin 401 ecclesiastical canons, including the apostolic canons and the decrees of the councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, Chalcedon, and Sardis, all of which were recorded in Greek, having taken place in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Pope John I in 525 asked him to create a chronology, which he did, using the Julian calendar and tabulating the dates of Easter, that "floating Holy Day" that caused much consternation in the early Church. In the process, Dionysius created a—let's call it a "convention"—that has lasted until today: the use of Anno Domini to describe years since the birth of Christ.
Tomorrow we take a deep dive into those two simple words, what came before, and how they were determined.
