ABSTRACT
While chapter two’s survey of the extant sources may lead to the conclusion that a sufficient quantity of texts has survived to facilitate a critical study of the archbishop’s long tenure, this impression could be misleading. Nearly all the evidence postdates the historical figure by centuries and much lacks corroboration. In the earliest sources, and even those stemming from the various Origenist controversies, Demetrius appears as a marginal figure consistently eclipsed by Origen. The only autonomous information retained by patristic sources amounts to a few terse references that document the bishop’s elevation to the episcopacy, the date of his death, and the claim that he commissioned the Christian philosopher Pantaenus (d. ca. 200 ce) to preach in “India.”1 These scattered allusions may be supplemented by a tenth-century gloss that identifies Demetrius as the first Alexandrian prelate to appoint bishops to other Egyptian dioceses and an eleventh-century passage that places the baptism of Dionysius of Alexandria at his hands.2
