RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Diocletian Diodorus
clergy of all ranks fell by scores, though the Roman bishop Marcellinus made an offering of incense. The rich growth of , martyrological literature in prose and poetry and the cult of martyrs, which soon became both wide-spread and important, were but expressions of the feeling with which Christendom looked back upon its " soldiers of the faith." Victor Schultzb.
Bibliography: Sources most productive are Eusebius, Hist. eccL, books viii.-ix.; Lactantius, De mortibus persemtorum. The best monograph is A. J. Mason, The Persecution of Diocletian, Cambridge, 1876. Consult: T. Bernhardt, Diokletian in seinem Verhiiltniss zu den Christen, Bonn, 1862; O. Hunziger, Zur Regierung und Christenverfolgung . . 303-313, Leipsic, 1868; B. Aub^, Histoire des persecutions de I'eglise, 2 vols., Paris, 1875-78; G. Uhlhorn, Der Kampf des Christenthums mit dem Heidentum, Stuttgart, 1889, Eng. transl.. New York, 1880; V. Schultze, Geschichte des Untergangs des griechischrSmischen Heidentums, 2 vols., Jena, 1887-92; P. AUard, La Persecution de Dioclctien et le triomphe de I'eglise, 2 vols., Paris, 1890; idem, Les Dernieres Persecutions du 3. siecle, ib. 1897; E. Le Blant, Les Persecuteurs aux premiers siecles, Paris, 1893; O. Seeck, Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt, vol. i., Berlin, 1897; G. Boissier. La Fin du paganisme, 2 vols., ib. 1901; L. PuUan, Church of the Fathers, chap, xvi., New York, 1905; Neander, Christian Church, i. 147-155 et passim, ii. passim; Schaff, Christian Church, ii. 64-74; Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chaps, xiii.-xvi.; DCB, i. 833-836.
DIODATI, di"o-dQ'ti, GIOVANNI: Genevan Reformer; b. at Lucca June 6, 1576; d. at Geneva Oct. 3, 1649. His family was compelled by religious persecution to flee from Italy. He was a rigid Calvinist, and while still a young man was appointed to teach Hebrew in the Academy of Geneva (1597), and later became professor of dogmatics. As one of the Genevan deputies to the Synod of Dort in 1618, he took part in the compilation of the canons of that body. He translated the Bible into Italian (Geneva, 1607), his version meeting with a success comparable with that of Luther's German rendering. He also prepared a revision of the French translation which had been made by the pastors and professors of Geneva in 1588, enriching his work by valuable notes and elucidations (Eng. transl., Pious Annotations upon the Holy Bible, London, 1643). He translated into French Sarpi's Historia del concilio tridentino (1621) and Sir Edwin Sandys's Relation of the State of Religion (1626). Diodati was a remarkable preacher and one of the most distinguished defenders of the Reformed Church, while the ambition of his life was the conversion of his native land, and especially the republic of Venice, to his own creed.
Eugene Choisy. Bibliography: E. de Budd, Vie de Jean Diodati, Geneva, 1869; G. D. J. Schotel, Jean Diodati, The Hague, 1844; P. Plan, Lettres trouvees, pages historiques sur un episode de la vie de Jean Diodati, ib. 1864; Maria Betts, Life of Giovanni Diodati, Genevese Theologian, London, 1905.
DIO"DO'RUS: Presbyter in Antioch, after 378 bishop of Tarsus; d. before 394. He was a native of Antioch, one of the most prominent theologians of the school of Antioch (q.v.), and on the dogmatic side its founder. After a general education at Athens he equipped himself as a theologian and orator by studying the writings of, and by personal intercourse with Eusebius of Emesa. His aim was twofold: to attain the fulness of ascetic perfection, and to be a champion of the Church's faith. He
strove with all his energy to fulfil the monastic ideal, and the emperor Julian pointed to his wasted body as a proof of the displeasure of the gods. The state of the Church in Antioch called Life and forth all his zeal as a presbyter. Not Literary only had Julian, who made his winter Activity, quarters there after his return from the Persian campaign, restored the temple of Apollo and used all his influence to win the population back to paganism, but most of the heretical sects were strong there. It was the center of Ariaiiism, and the Meletian schism had rent the Church in two. Diodorus was the leading defender of the Nicene faith. Naturally, therefore, his writings, of which the later Syrian Church still knew over sixty, were mainly controversial. They were directed against all the principal enemies of the Church, pagan, Jewish, and heretic. Of the philosophers he especially combated Plato, Aristotle, and Porphyry; among heretics the Manicheans, Eunomians, and Apollinarians, Sabellius, Marcellus, and Photinus. He employed, too, a very practical churchly activity against both pagans and Arians; and his success, while it raised up bitter enemies for him, made his name honored throughout the Eastern Church. Even as a layman, under Constantius, when the Arian Leontius occupied the episcopal chair of Antioch, with his friend Flavian, Diodorus had assembled the faithful by night for worship. When the gentle Meletius became bishop in 360 Diodorus supported him vigorously and watched over the welfare of the flock when the bishop was obliged by Arian enmity to flee, and went from house to house strengthening the devotion of the oppressed faithful. In 372 he was forced to join the banished Meletius in Armenia. Here he made friends with Basil the Great, and the orthodoxy of Cappadocia and of Antioch joined hands to insure the triumph of the Nicene faith. Six years later he was consecrated bishop of Tarsus by Meletius (378). In this capacity he took part in the Council of Constantinople (381), and is said to have brought about the choice of Nectarius as patriarch. The council gave him metropolitan jurisdiction over Cilicia. An imperial edict of 381 names him among the bishops who were to decide the question of Nicene orthodoxy and consequently of membership in the Catholic Church.
By a curious turn of fate, he who had been honored as a pillar of the true faith by his contemporaries fell under suspicion of heresy not forty years after his death, as a result of the Nestorian controversy. In his anxiety to vindicate the significance of the human element in the person of Christ and in the Scriptures, threatened by an overstrained idealism, in controversy with Apollinaris Diodorus had put forth a theory of the relation of the two natures in Christ Theological which seemed to dissolve the one Opinions, divine-human Person into two. According to the fragments still preserved of the works called in question (" Against the Synusiasts " and " On the Holy Spirit "), he apparently distinguished between the Logos and the Son of David, one the Son of God by nature, the other by grace. Mary's son was not the Logos,
Diodorus
Dionysius of Alexandria