Dionysius of Alexandria

Pupil of Origen, head of the catechetical school and bishop of Alexandria from 247, who lived through the persecutions of Decius and Valerian and the plague that followed; called "the Great" by the Greeks. His letters on the lapsed, on baptism and on Easter survive in Eusebius and in the canonical collections, and he was the first to argue on grounds of style that the Revelation was not written by the apostle John. The chain has his canonical letter to Basilides on the Easter fast.