ON ST. PINITUS, BISHOP OF CNOSSUS ON THE ISLAND OF CRETE,
ABOUT THE YEAR 180.
SYLLOGE.
Age and cult.
Pinitus, bishop and confessor, at Gnossus on the island of Crete. (S.)
BY J. B. F.
Eusebius Pamphili, in book 4 of his Ecclesiastical History, treats at length of the things worth recording that took place under the rule of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, who reigned together with his brother Lucius Aelius Verus, The Saint's ancient memory in Eusebius that is, from the year 161 to the year 180; and in chapter 21, concerning the ecclesiastical writers who flourished at that time, he has the following: In those same times there flourished in the Church Hegesippus, of whom we treated on the 7th of April, and Dionysius, bishop of the Corinthians, whose virtues and Acts were worked out in our Work at the 8th day of April; Pinytus also, bishop of the Cretans; Philip besides, and Apollinaris and Melito; Misanus too and Modestus, and above all Irenaeus *. The books of all of these, containing the sincere doctrine of the Apostolic tradition and of the true faith, have come down even to us. In the following chapters Eusebius deals with each of them separately, and in chapter 23, where he treats of the letters of St. Dionysius, he lists among them one sent to St. Pinitus, bishop of Cnossus, and this man's reply to St. Dionysius; and I transcribe his words here: In the same volume there is contained also a letter to the Gnossians, in which he admonishes Pinytus, the bishop of that church, not to lay the heavy burden of continence upon the necks of the brethren as though it were necessary, but to take account of the weakness that is in most men. Replying to this letter afterwards, Pinytus first of all extols Dionysius with admiration and praise; but he nevertheless urges him at length to impart more solid food, and, by sending once more letters of more perfect doctrine, to be willing to nourish the people entrusted to him; lest perhaps men, nourished perpetually on milky discourses, should grow old little by little in a kind of infantile discipline. This letter, indeed, shows excellently, as in a painted picture, both the right faith of Pinytus and his solicitude for the progress of the people entrusted to him, and also his eloquence and his skill in divine things.
[2] And in the martyrologists. This saint, bishop of the city of Cnossus, once a royal city (concerning which Strabo should be consulted, Geography book 10) and now destroyed, the martyrologists celebrate on the 10th day of October, and first of all the little Roman Martyrology, whose announcement you may receive here: In Crete, of Pinytus, most noble among bishops. Ado and Usuard indicated his feast day with almost the same elogium. In the present-day Roman Martyrology, however, he is adorned with this encomium: On the island of Crete, of blessed Pinitus, most noble among bishops; he, bishop of the city of Gnossus, flourished under Marcus Antoninus Verus and Lucius Aurelius Commodus, and in his writings, as in a kind of mirror, left a living image of himself. These things are reported in a similar phrase, or one somewhat different, in Maurolycus, Felicius, Ghinius, Galesinius, Canisius and in some manuscripts. And these few things are all I have been able to find concerning our Saint: the rest, which, as Eusebius and the martyrologists already cited relate, the most noble prelate of Gnossus wrote, are counted among the lost works.
Annotata* Irenaeus