Pinytus of Cnossus

When was Pinytus active?

Pinytus of Cnossus is dated fl. c. AD 170 (death unrecorded) in the archive, which places Pinytus in the Ante-Nicene Church (AD 180–313). The dating is traditional and approximate; the archive marks it as uncertain rather than fixing a year the sources do not give.

What did Pinytus write?

Pinytus of Cnossus has 1 catalogued writing in the archive: Reply to Dionysius of Corinth. All are lost, known only from later citation.

Which early sources mention Pinytus?

Pinytus of Cnossus is named in 2 primary-source passages catalogued here, drawn from Eusebius of Caesarea and Jerome of Stridon. Every passage is quoted from a named public-domain translation, earliest first.

Where was Pinytus from?

The archive associates Pinytus of Cnossus with Cnossus, Crete. The sources record more than one location, so the places are listed in the order the record moves through them.

He exhorted him to impart at some time stronger food, that his people might not remain always among the milky doctrines. (after Eusebius, HE IV.23)

Pinytus, replying, admires and commends Dionysius, but exhorts him in turn to impart some time more solid food, and to feed the people under him, when he wrote again, with more advanced teaching — an accurate image of his orthodoxy and his care for the profit of his flock.

Pinytus of Crete, bishop of the city of Gnosus, wrote an exceedingly elegant letter in which he teaches that the people are not to be forever fed on milk, lest by chance they be overtaken by the last day while yet infants.