Pierius of Alexandria Search This Resource     in this Authorin this Sectionin all Sections   Buy This Resource 10 Volumes HardCover $275.00 10 Volumes Library Binding $299.00  Show me more …   TRANSLATOR'S BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE. [a.d. 275.] Among the very eminent men who flourished near his own time, Eusebius mentions Pierius, a presbyter of Alexandria, and speaks of him as greatly renowned for his voluntary poverty, his philosophical erudition and his skill in the exposition of Scripture and in discoursing to the public assemblies of the Church.(2) He lived in the latter part of the third century, and seems to have been for a considerable period president of the Catechetical school at Alexandria. Jerome says that he was called Origenes, junior; and according to Photius, he shared in some of the errors of Origen, on such subjects especially as the doctrine of the Holy Ghost and the pre-existence of souls.(3) In his manner of life he was an ascetic. After the persecution under Galerius or Maximus he lived at Rome. He appears to have devoted himself largely to sacred criticism and the study of the text of Scripture; and among several treatises written by him, and extant in the time of Photius, we find mention made of one on the prophet Hosea. And, in addition to the Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, Photius notices twelve books of his, and praises both their composition and their matter. FOOTNOTES: Praepositus cubiculariorum. See Neander's Church History, vol. i. p. 197 (Bohn). [Christians began to be preferred for their probity. Diocletian's reign at first gave the Church a long peace (see vol. iv. p. 126) of well-nigh ten years.]