(A.D. 303.)
[German Martyrology. No trustworthy authorities for his life and
acts. The following account is from the Augsburg Breviary.]
Dionysius, together with his sister Hilaria, (August 12th), her
daughter Afra, (August 7th), and the rest of his family, was converted
and baptized by S. Narcissus the bishop, afterwards chief pastor of
the Church of Gerona, in Spain, (March 18th.) As Narcissus was obliged
to leave the little band of Christians at Augsburg, he instructed, and
then ordained, Dionysius to be their priest, or, as some writers
assert, their bishop. Thus Dionysius became the spiritual father of a
little family of true believers, and was called to encourage them
during the fiery trial of persecution. He saw his sister Hilaria, and
her daughter Afra, glorify God by martyrdom. Knowing that his own turn
had come, he fortified himself with the Holy Sacrament, yielded
himself into the hands of those who sought his life, and dying a
martyr's death, gained the crown and palm.
The relics of this saint, who is reckoned the first bishop of
Augsburg, together with those of Quiriacus, were discovered in the
year 1118, and were translated by the abbot Egino to the Church of S.
Ulrich, in Augsburg, and enclosed in an altar. Later, in the year
1258, Hartmann, bishop of Augsburg, opened this altar, and placed
them, on 26th Feb., in a new altar, dedicated to SS. Dionysius and
Quiriacus, and he ordered that this day should be observed as the
festival of S. Dionysius. The Church of Augsburg honours him as her
first bishop, though the episcopal see of Augsburg was not regularly
constituted till 250 years later, when Sosimus became the first of a
succession of prelates which from that time to the present has not
failed.