PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS THE COMPLETE WORKS
TRANSLATION BY COLM LUIBHEID
FOREWORD, NOTES, AND TRANSLATION COLLABORATION BY PAUL ROREM
PREFACE BY RENE ROQUES INTRODUCTIONS BY
JAROSLAV PELIKAN, JEAN LECLERCQ, AND KARLFRIED FROEHLICH
Publication Information: Book Title: Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works. Contributors: Karlfried Froehlich - unknown, Jean Leclercq - unknown, Colm Luibheid - transltr, Jaroslav Pelikan - unknown, Pseudo-Dionysius - author, Rene Roques - unknown, Paul Rorem - unknown. Publisher: Paulist Press. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1987. Page Number: *.
Cover Art:
The artist, POMONA HALLENBECK is a native of the southwest. Pomona now lives in New York City and teaches at schools and workshops in New York, Texas, New Mexico and Canada. She also does textile designs and multimedia education materials.
Copyright © 1987 by Colm Luibheid
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pseudo-Dionysius, the Aeropagite.
Pseudo-Dionysius : the complete works. (The Classics of Western spirituality) Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. God—Knowableness—Collected works.
2. Spiritual life—Collected works. 3. Mysticism— Collected works. 4. Sacraments—Collected works. I. Luibhéid, Colm. II. Rorem, Paul. III. Title. IV. Series.
BR65. D6E5 1987 230'.14 87-2502 ISBN 0-8091-2838-1
Published by Paulist Press 997 Macarthur Boulevard Mahwah, New Jersey 07430
Printed and bound in the United States of America Contents Foreword 1 Preface 5 Abbreviations 8 Introductions 1
I. The Odyssey of Dionysian Spirituality 1
II. Influence and noninfluence of Dionysius in the Western Middle Ages 25 III. Pseudo-Dionysius and the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century 33
4
The Divine Names 7
The Mystical Theology 133
The Celestial Hierarchy 143
The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy 193
The Letters 261
Bibliography 291
Index to Biblical Allusions and Quotations 294
Index to Foreword, Preface and Introductions 305
Index to Text 309
Index of Contemporary Authors in Footnotes 313
Index of Names and Terms in Footnotes 314
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Translator of this Volume
COLM LUIBHEID was born in 1936 in Dublin, Ireland. He received his B. A. and M. A. at University College, Dublin, and in 1961 was awarded a Ph. D. in Classics at Princeton University. Since 1961 he has been a member of the teaching staff at University College, Galway. He translated the John Climacus volume in this series.
Author of the Foreword and Notes
PAUL ROREM lives in Chicago, Illinois, with his wife, Katherine Skrebutenas, and their daughter, Anna. He is Associate Professor of Ancient Church History at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. His doctoral thesis at Princeton Theological Seminary was recently published as Biblical and Liturgical Symbols within the PseudoDionysian Synthesis (Toronto, 1984).
RENE ROQUES is Director of Studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes of the Sorbonne. He holds degrees from the Institut Catholique, the Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris), and the University of Tübingen, and is an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy. An expert on the history of Christian antiquity and the High Middle Ages in the West, he is renowned as one of the leading Dionysian scholars of our time.
Introducers of this Volume
JAROSLAV PELIKAN received his Ph. D. in 1946 from the University of Chicago, where he also taught from 1953 to 1962. Since 1962 he has been a member of the faculty of Yale University, where he is now Sterling Professor of History. He was editor of the American edition of Luther's Works, and is a member of the editorial board for The Collected Works of Erasmus. Of his books, the best known is probably The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (1971ff.), projected for five volumes. In addition to the second volume of that set, The Spirit ofEastern Christendom (600-1700), his publications in the history of Christian doctrine in the East include a monograph on Athanasius, an edition of
Chrysostom's commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, and numerous essays dealing with thinkers from Gregory of Nyssa and Basil of Caesarea through Maximus Confessor to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.
JEAN LECLERCQ, O. S. B., a medieval historian, is a Benedictine monk. He has written some 70 books and 700 articles in a 40-year career. He is presently a professor in the Institute of Religious Psychology, Gregorian University, Rome. His permanent residence is the Abbey of Clervaux in Luxembourg.
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KARLFRIED FROEHLICH was born in Germany in 1930. He studied classical languages and theology at the universities of Basel, Göttingen, and Paris and received an M. A. in Biblical Studies from Drew
University and a Th. D. from the University of Basel in 1963. Since 1982 he has been B. B. Warfield Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Princeton Theological Seminary. He is co-author with H. C. Kee and F. W. Young of Understanding the New Testament (2nd and 3rd editions, 1965 and 1973) and editor of Oscar Cullmann: Vorträge und Aufsätze 1925-1962 (1966); Ökumene—Möglichkeiten und Grenzen Heute (1982); and Biblical Interpretation in the Early Church (1984).
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Foreword Paul Rorem
The writings attached to the name of Dionysius the Areopagite (Acts 17:34) are all introduced, translated, and annotated in this single volume. The reader will face the unanswered questions of Dionysian
scholarship: Who was the author of these Greek works, which actually date from the fifth or sixth century? Were his (or her?) sympathies Christian or Neoplatonic or both? What was the influence on the spirituality of medieval Christianity and on the modern world? More importantly, nonspecialists can now explore for themselves the actual contents of these famous but seldom-read writings instead of only hearing or reading about them.
The texts themselves are not long, although their dense style has given many that impression. They are here presented in the order suggested by the author's internal allusions, since there are no dependable historical references. The Divine Names uses the various biblical names for God, such as "Good," "Being," and "Life," as a starting point for a thorough philosophical discussion of the divine attributes. Yet
whatever is affirmed about God must also be denied. The Mystical Theology provides an extremely brief summary of the author's method of affirmative and negative theology and its spiritual goal. It begins with Moses ascending into the dark "cloud of unknowing" and ends with the negation of all presumed attributes of the transcendent God. The Celestial Hierarchy considers the three triads of angelic beings, as described in the scriptures. The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy presents the rites and offices of the church: the three sacraments (baptism, Eucharist, and consecration of the myron-ointment), the three ordinations (of the hierarch or bishop, priests, and deacons), monastic tonsure, and funerals. To describe the relationship of the hierarch to those below him, Dionysius invented the word "hierarchy." The nine Letters consider different aspects of these same topics.
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René Roques, perhaps the Nestor of modern Pseudo-Dionysian studies, touches first on several spiritual themes in these writings and on their contemporary interest. Jaroslav Pelikan's historical essay introduces the original questions of authenticity and the alleged heresies of the Dionysian corpus, as well as some of its reception in the early Middle Ages. Jean Leclercq documents the wide range of medieval authors and topics touched by this corpus, whether deeply or lightly. Karlfried Froehlich then surveys the previously uncharted terrain of the Pseudo-Dionysian reception and critique by Humanists and sixteenth-century Reformers.
Colm Luibheid's translation is based on the Greek text of the Migne edition (PG 3), with a few changes according to the critical edition forthcoming from Göttingen (see the bibliography). The Dionysian corpus is notoriously difficult to translate, as witnessed by the complete absence of any English rendition of the entire corpus in the twentieth century. Luibheid's achievement resulted from not only his facility in Greek and his felicity of English style, but also from much perseverance and patience.
The notes, necessarily brief, concentrate on providing cross-references within the corpus and a more comprehensive identification of the numerous biblical quotations and allusions than available elsewhere. They also give some indication of the secondary literature, which considers more fully the Christian and Neoplatonic background of the Pseudo-Dionysian corpus.
In the cross-references and the index, the treatises are abbreviated as follows: DN = The Divine Names, MT = The Mystical Theology, CH = The Celestial Hierarchy, EH = The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, and Ep. = one of the Letters. The column numbers and letters are taken from the Corderius edition in Migne with the line numbers often supplied as well. Thus DN 1 588A 2-5 indicates The Divine Names, chapter one, column 588A, lines two through five. The biblical citations are noted and indexed according to the divisions used in the Revised Standard Version (RSV), including its numbering of the Psalms. The notation LXX (for Septuagint) indicates a quotation or allusion that is not identifiable in the RSV translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, but only in the Greek Old Testament.
Secondary works noted only by author and short title are described more fully in the bibliography. The bibliography itself points the interested reader to some of the major works in Pseudo-Dionysian studies, as well as to more thorough and scholarly bibliographies.
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The Pseudo-Dionysian style and message may both perplex and enchant. Patience, small doses, and frequent review of The Mystical Theology can help smooth the way. In any case, a perplexed reader is in good company, for the history of Christian doctrine and spirituality teems with commentators and general readers who have found the Areopagite's meaning obscure, and yet his mysterious appeal irresistible.
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Preface René Roques
It may seem paradoxical to underline the present-day value of PseudoDionysius, and consequently to stress the timeliness of a translation of his complete works. It seems we have here an author and treatises that are enigmatic, hard to understand, and involved in a historical and doctrinal context so far removed from ours that bringing them to the attention of present-day people may seem slightly anachronistic. This, however, was not the opinion of the translator, Colm Luibheid, and his assistant, Paul Rorem, and it is fitting to congratulate them for their courageous initiative, while wishing them full and deserved success. Consciously or not, it seems that today's thought and research have often coincided with Dionysian principles and themes regarding major issues, such as the hierarchic vision of the world, the approach to God and the different ways of "naming" him, the correlative presentation of the "divinizing" of
intelligences, and the treatment of symbols.
Dionysius illustrated in his own way the Platonic and Neoplatonic pattern of the three classes, three functions, and three levels. In his eyes, indeed, all reality is hierarchic and triadic. Thus the angelic universe includes three triads, each subdivided into three orders, which are themselves partitioned into three levels of intelligences, each of which corresponds to the ternary structure. In each one of these triadic groups, the function of perfection or union pertains to the first term, that of illumination to the second, and the function of purification to the third. The distribution of orders and functions is largely identical in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
The totality of this twofold universe, the angelic and the human, constitutes a sacred order, an
understanding, and an activity, all regulated by the law of hierarchical mediations, both in the sense of the "descent" of divine illumination and in that of the "ascent" of divini
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zation. The harmony and the rigor of the whole and of the parts demand that each triad, each rank, and each intelligence remain strictly in its proper place and there perform entirely and uniquely its proper function. In sharp contrast with most visions of the world, that of Dionysius includes only those
intelligences able to be divinized, and excludes anything that may be closed to divinization. This explains why the stability, the movement, and the efficacy of the Dionysian hierarchy are entirely dependent on the divine "Thearchy," the source and goal of all divinization.
The approach to God will come about through the hierarchy, in the midst of which the divine "names" will be elaborated and purified. Whatever the origin of these names—biblical or philosophical—all are related to the same method, to a double and apparently contradictory axiom that the whole creation reveals God (Rom 1:20), while on the contrary no one has ever seen God (Ex 33:20; Jn 1:18; 1 Jn 4:12). Hence, God will receive many names, an infinity of names ("polyonomos," "apeironomos"); or, on the contrary, he will remain without a name, above every name ("anonomos," "hyperonomos"). More precisely, from the viewpoint of the creative procession, it will be possible to qualify or name God by means of his total work (affirmative or cataphatic theology); from the viewpoint of the divinizing return, it will be necessary to eliminate every name (negative or apophatic theology). From the latter point of view, the truest according to Dionysius, it will become necessary even to contest the validity of the essential terms of trinitarian
dogmatics (unity, trinity), those same terms that John the Scot (Eriugena) will oppose even more radically in his critique of the notions of relationship and love.
Such a position, which essentially marks the limits of intelligences faced by God's transcendence, does not compromise in any way the divinization of these same intelligences, which will come about precisely and most of all through this attitude of negation. Several of the Dionysian "sacraments" strongly emphasize the need for purification, which, in the light of the divine unity, will carry the intelligence beyond itself (baptism, Eucharist, and especially religious or monastic consecration). More directly, the radical critique and rejection by the intelligence of each of the names that are more or less accessible to it indicate definite steps forward of this same intelligence in the direction of its own divinization. Paradoxically, then, the divinization of the intelligence is dependent on this same intelligence
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renouncing its own output, its order of thought, and, more radically, its own self.
Perceptible symbols will be but a particular field of this same method. The intelligence must interpret, correct, straighten out, "reduce," and deny the images, forms, and schemes in which are materially
represented the divine realities they are unable to contain. For Dionysius, scriptural symbolism is intended first of all for teaching. It is educational, and thus temporary, and it is divided empirically into two groups, which are treated in slightly different ways and which seem at first to have different degrees of efficacy. "Similar" symbolism—beautiful, simple, agreeable to the senses—seems better adapted to the education of beginners. "Dissimilar" symbolism, on the contrary, through its very dissimilarity, its ugliness or monstrosity, and by the natural repugnance it inspires, proves from the very first to be better adapted to the method of negation that it demands. That is why it is much preferable to the similar symbolism, since it avoids the naturalistic and aesthetic obstacles by engaging the intelligence more directly in the way of negation. Whether it is similar or dissimilar, every symbol, like every divine name, has meaning only in the light of the divinization of the intelligence, which cannot be effected on the level of the symbol any more than on that of the name.
The following translation of the complete works will provide, in all their fullness and with the necessary shades, the themes essential to Dionysianism, which I have recalled much too summarily. I believe that modern readers will find here a source of reflection and of light concerning the most current problems. Luibheid and Rorem will help them in this way with complete competence.
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Abbreviations
CH The Celestial Hierarchy DN The Divine Names
EH The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy Ep. Epistle/Letter
MT The Mystical Theology
LXX Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament PG Patrologia Graeca
PL Patrologia Latina SC Sources Chrétiennes
Secondary works noted only by author and short title are described more fully in the bibliography.
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Introductions I
The Odyssey of Dionysian Spirituality
Jaroslav Pelikan
It would be a challenging project, but a fascinating one, to write the history of Western Christian spirituality in the late patristic and medieval periods primarily or even exclusively on the basis of those neglected writings that are identified in successive volumes of J. P. Migne's Patrologia Latina and Patrologia Graeca as "spurious" or as "dubious," together with those purportedly authentic writings that in fact belong in the same categories. Bertrand Russell once said, in a celebrated bon mot, that he had difficulty telling the difference between a paradox that veils a profound truth and one that is simply nonsense. Similarly, it would seem to be more difficult than current conventional wisdom among theologians suggests to tell the difference between the "pious fraud" of pseudonymity and just plain forgery.
In any event, the pseudonymous works bearing the names of the Greek and Latin church fathers have played an interesting and important role in Western spirituality and in Western theology, sometimes a more important role than the authentic works of the same fathers on the same subjects. For example, during much of the medieval debate over predestination, the Hypomnesticon (sometimes called Hypognosticon) ascribed to Augustine, 1. with its sharp distinction between divine foreknowledge and divine predestination, was used to correct the potential danger to a responsible spirituality that seemed to proceed from a reading of the authentically Augustinian On the Predestination of the Saints, On the Gift of Perseverance, and other late works
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1.For the first scholarly edition of this text and a discussion of alternative theories of its authorship, see John Edward Chisholm, ed., The Pseudo-Augustinian "Hypomnēsticon against the Pelagians and Celestians" (Freiburg, Switzerland, 1980).
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that he had directed against Pelagianism. 2. Again, the treatise You Compel Me [Cogitis me], composed by
the ninth-century Benedictine of Corbie, Paschasius Radbertus, under the name of Saint Jerome, 3. made a far more substantial contribution to the history of Marian spirituality and devotion than any of the genuine works of Jerome, 4. or for that matter than the other principal work of Paschasius Radbertus himself on the subject of the Blessed Virgin Mary, On the Parturition of Saint Mary [De partu Mariae]. 5. It would surely not be difficult for most medievalists to prolong this list, but it would be very difficult indeed to think of a more impressive example in the entire history of medieval spirituality and theology than the body of writings attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite, which for spirituality must stand alongside the Donation of Constantine and the pseudo-Isidorian Decretals for canon law in any catalog of this puzzling and fascinating genre of Christian literature.
From the introduction and notes that accompany the present definitive English translation of the Corpus Areopagiticum, the twentiethcentury English reader can learn the present state of the scholarly speculation about the true identity of the Pseudo-Dionysius. 6. That speculation has been going on, as the
accompanying essay "PseudoDionysius and the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century" makes clear, ever since the "subapostolic" dating of these writings came under suspicion—for a mixture of scholarly and polemical reasons, though in by no means as simple a way as the textbooks sometimes say 7. —and the end is not yet. 8. Thus perhaps the most provocative hypothesis about the authorship is one that the weight of the arguments set forth by the great scholar of Syriac theology, Joseph Lebon, demonstrated to be untenable. 9. Nevertheless, it remains tantalizing to
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2.See Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (Chicago, 1971-), vol. 3, pp. 80-95.
3.Albert Ripberger, ed., Der Pseudo-Hieronymus-Brief IX "Cogitis me." Ein erster marianischer Traktat des Mittelalters von Paschasius Radbert (Freiburg, Switzerland, 1962).
4.Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, pp. 68-74.
5.J. M. Canal, "La virginidad de Maria según Ratramno y Radberto, monjes de Corbie. Nueva edición de los textos," Marianum 30 (1968): 53-160, to be superseded by the critical edition of E. Ann Matter in the Corpus Christianorum: Continuatio Mediaevalis.
6.See the front matter of the reference in fn. 5. 7.See pp. 33-46.
8.Hieronymus Engberding, "Zur neuesten Identifizierung des Ps.-Dionysius Areopagita," Philosophisches Jahrbuch der Görres-Gesellschaft 64 (1956): 218-27.
9.Joseph Lebon, "Le Pseudo-Denys l'Aréopagite et Sévère d'Antioche," Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique 26 (1930): 880-915.
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ponder the brilliant if erroneous suggestion made in 1928 by Joseph Stiglmayr, 10. on the basis of his researches begun a third of a century earlier on the specific kinds of Neoplatonism at work in Dionysius,
11. that Pseudo-Dionysius was in fact the "Monophysite" Patriarch of Antioch, Severus (ca. 465-538), most
of whose writings were destroyed by the Orthodox but survive in "Monophysite" Syriac versions. Stiglmayr argued for his hypothesis on the grounds that Severus was the only Christian writer in approximately the time and place of these works whose genius was equal to that of the great unknown author and whose Neoplatonic-Christian spirituality closely paralleled that of the Pseudo-Dionysian corpus. Unacceptable though it is, that hypothesis does serve to remind us that the spirituality of this quasi-apostolic author did not originally have unquestionable credentials entitling it to inclusion in the postbiblical canon of orthodox faith and piety. Therefore the odyssey of Dionysian spirituality, first from the heretical East to the Orthodox East and then from the Orthodox East to the Catholic West, through which it eventually acquired such credentials and was given an honored place in that canon, is an important chapter in the history of Western spirituality.
In what is apparently the earliest known reference to the Corpus Areopagiticum, both the authenticity of the books and the orthodoxy of their doctrine and spirituality came into question. It occurs in a report, bearing the title "Epistle of Innocent the Maronite concerning a Conference Held with the Severians [Innocentii Maronitae epistula de collatione cum Severianis habita]," on a colloquy held in 532 between a group of orthodox followers of the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon of 451, led by Hypatius of
Ephesus, and a group of "Severians," usually called "Monophysites." In an effort to find support in patristic tradition for their devotion to "a single nature of the incarnate Logos," the Severians quoted various authorities, including the Orthodox Alexandrian patriarchs Athanasius and Cyril, Gregory
Thaumaturgus, and finally "Dionysius the Areopagite, all of whom assert that there is one nature of God the Logos after the union." 12. It is not clear which texts attributed to these various fathers they specifically cited, but the response of Hypatius of Ephesus is noteworthy. After rejecting their
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10.Joseph Stiglmayr, "Der sogenannte Dionysius Areopagita und Severus von Antiochien," Scholastik 3 (1928): 1-27, 161-89.
11.Joseph Stiglmayr, "Der Neuplatoniker Proclus als Vorlage des sogen. Dionysius Areopagita in der Lehre vom Uebel," Historisches Jahrbuch 16 (1895): 253-73, 721-48.
12.Reprinted in Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum (Strasbourg, 1914-), 4-II: 172.
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efforts to claim the spirituality of the other fathers as an authority for their Monophysite teaching, he continued: "Finally, we say what should have been said at the outset. Those quotations that you claim to have come from the Blessed Dionysius the Areopagite—how can you prove that they are authentic, as you maintain? For if they do come from him, they could not have been unknown to the Blessed Cyril." 13. One must be careful not to press this statement too far; but since there are, of course, no quotations at all from Dionysius in the writings of Cyril, the charge of inauthenticity raised by Hypatius may extend to the corpus as a whole rather than merely to one or another passage being quoted by the Severians. In any case, however, it is impossible to overlook the circumstance that the spirituality of the Pseudo-Dionysius—or, if the passages in question do not form part of the present Corpus Areopagiticum, would it be more
appropriate to say "the pseudo-PseudoDionysius," in the way that students of medieval canon law speak of the earliest texts of the Donation of Constantine as "authentic forgeries"?!—appeared in this debate as a source of Christological heresy. Nor, on the other hand, did the Orthodox defenders of the Council of Chalcedon counter these quotations with others from Dionysius, presumably authentic, in which he could be shown to have favored a spirituality based on their doctrine of two continuing natures in God the Logos after the incarnation.
There is further evidence for the appreciation of Dionysius among Severus and both his followers and his opponents in the way Dionysius is used in the Syriac texts, Monophysite as well as Nestorian. Thus we find Timothy I, the ninth-century Nestorian Patriarch of Constantinople, endeavoring to determine whether the Syriac translation of Dionysius by a certain Athanasius or that by a certain Phocas was preferable. 14. The renowned master of Nestorian spirituality, Babai the Great (who died c.628), in an exposition of the suspect but influential devotional manual, the Centuries of Evagrius Ponticus, made use of the Dionysian parallel between the ecclesiastical hierarchy of bishops and the celestial hierarchy of angels as well as of the treatise On the Divine Names, which he ascribed to "Saint Dionysius, the disciple of Paul." 15. There also exists at least one Nestorian com-
____________________ 13.Ibid., 4-II: 173.
14.Timothy I Epistles 33, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 75: 106 [74: 156].
15.Babai, Exposition of the Book of Centuries by Evagrius Ponticus, ii. 78, ed. Wilhelm Frankenberg, Evagrius Ponticus (Berlin, 1912), p. 183 [182]; ii. 17, p. 143 [142].
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mentary on Dionysius, that of Josef Hazzaya. 16. But it is far more the Monophysite and Severian Syriac
literature of devotion and theology that we find resonating to the distinctive tones of Dionysian
for example, in Jacob of Edessa, 18. as it does in the Nestorian and the Orthodox writers. But it is evident from the quotations of Dionysius in the writings of Severus, as these quotations have been carefully analyzed by Lebon in his critique of Stiglmayr, that Dionysian spirituality provided Severus and his followers with formulas and ideas not alone for their general spirituality, but specifically for the spirituality associated with their doctrine of the person of Christ, including the characteristic phrase "composite operation [energeia synthetos]," which seems to have been Severus's adaptation of a
Dionysian formula. 19. Therefore Theodosius I of Alexandria, a sixth-century apologist for Severus against the Chalcedonians, could claim that "Severus, of blessed memory, was no less assiduous and no less careful in his reading of the books of Saint Dionysius than they." 20. And as Guillaumont has noted, there are some striking parallels between Dionysius and the so-called Book of Hierotheos of Stephan Bar Soudaili, a Monophysite whose spirituality and theology stood in the tradition of Origen and Evagrius. 21. All of this served only to corroborate suspicions of the sort voiced by Hypatius of Ephesus in 532. It would seem, moreover, that these suspicions of the doctrinal rectitude of Dionysian spirituality were by no means an isolated instance. Apparently the first scholar to compose glosses on Dionysius was John of Scythopolis, who was, as both Hans-Georg Beck 22. and
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16.Adolf Rücker, "Aus dem mystischen Schrifttum nestorianischer Mönche des 6.-8. Jahrhunderts," Orientalische Stimmen zum Erlösungsgedanken, ed. Franz Gustav Taeschner (Leipzig, 1936), p. 46. 17.See pp. 143-191 below.
18.Jacob of Edessa, Exposition of the Haexaemeron, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 97: 6 (92: 8).
19.Joseph Lebon, "La christologie du monophysisme syrien," Das Konzil von Chalkedon: Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Aloys Grillmeier and Heinrich Bacht, 3 vols. (Wurzburg, 1951), vol. 1, pp. 558-59. 20.Theodosius of Alexandria, Oration 6, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 103: 52 [17: 75]. 21.A. Guillaumont, Les "Kephalaia Gnostica" d'Evagre le Pontique et l'histoire de l'origénisme chez les
Grecs et chez les Syriens (Paris, 1962), pp. 302-32.
22.Hans-Georg Beck, Kirche und theologische Literatur im byzantinischen Reich (Munich, 1959), p. 376.
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Charles Moeller 23. have said, the first defender of Orthodox spirituality to have been an intellectual and scholarly match for Severus of Antioch. As we now know, those glosses must be disentangled from the authentic glosses on Dionysius by Maximus Confessor, with which they have been conflated in the manuscript tradition. 24. The dominant Tendenz of John's glosses was to bring Dionysius into conformity with Orthodox spirituality and dogma. 25. That effort was made necessary not only because the language of Dionysius could easily be misconstrued and needed glossing, but especially because he had come under fire. "There are some," John of Scythopolis (now Pseudo-Maximus the Confessor) writes in his preface, "who have the audacity [tolmōsi] to reproach the divine Dionysius with heresies, but they are utterly ignorant of what the heretics teach. " 26. The use of the plural "heresies" suggests that Dionysius was being accused (by unspecified critics) of error on more than one doctrine, more, that is, than the doctrine of the person of Christ. This impression is confirmed when John of Scythopolis goes on to refer not only to the doctrine of the person of Christ, but to the doctrine of the Trinity. For the form that the dispute over Christology was taking at this time had once more involved the doctrine of the Trinity. Significantly, it was from the area of liturgy and spirituality, rather than of dogma and speculation, that the issue arose: Was it permissible to say in the language of prayer and worship, "One of the Trinity was crucified for us"? Now obviously, as Werner Elert points out, "no Monophysite ever had the intention of predicating the crucifixion of the Trinity; they were always referring only to the person of the Son." 27. But it was
apparently necessary to vindicate the spirituality of Dionysius by establishing his loyalty to the Council of Nicaea as well as to the Council of Chalcedon.
An interesting example of how John of Scythopolis facilitated the odyssey of Dionysian spirituality from the heretical East to the orthodox East occurs in his comments on a passage in the third book of The ____________________
23.Charles Moeller, "Le chalcédonisme et le néo-chalcédonisme en Orient de 451 à la fin du VIe siècle," in Grillmeier and Bacht, Chalkedon, 1: 675, n. 105.
24.Hans Urs von Balthasar, "Das Scholienwerk des Johannes von Skythopolis," Scholastik 15 (1940): 16-38.
25.On the relation of Maximus to Dionysius, see the introductions by George Berthold and by Jaroslav Pelikan in the volume Maximus Confessor in this series.
26.John of Scythopolis, Prologue to the Works of Saint Dionysius, Patrologia Graeca, 4:20. 27.Werner Elert, Der Ausgang der altkirchlichen Christologie (Berlin, 195 7), p. 106.
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Ecclesiastical Hierarchy. 28. Dionysius speaks there of "how out of love for humanity Christ emerged from the hiddenness of his divinity to take on human shape, to be utterly incarnate among us while yet remaining unmixed." Although there are other passages in Dionysius that could— and indeed did— connect his spirituality to that of the Monophysites, or any rate to that of Severus, as we shall see at greater length a bit later, this formulation gave his commentator just the handle he needed to dissociate Dionysius from any spirituality that would deny to the incarnate Logos after the union a full and distinct human nature. "He says, 'complete in every respect,' " John explained, "inasmuch as [Christ] assumed both a rational soul and a body. And he very aptly says 'utterly incarnate among us while yet remaining
unmixed,' because [Christ] remained God when he appeared as man, preserving the properties of each nature." "And this," he added, "should be taken note of in opposition to the Apollinarians. " 29. Both the term "unmixed [asynchytō]" and the formula "preserving the properties of each nature" are, of course, echoes of the decree of the Council of Chalcedon in 451, and elsewhere the commentator had to explain how a (presumably) first-century writer could have had the prescience to quote the language of the fifth century; 30. moreover, they represent that pole of Orthodox spirituality that stressed the distinction of the natures against the "Eutychian" tendency to confuse them. As interpreted by his later Orthodox
commentator, Dionysius the Areopagite emerges as one whose spirituality was exactly the same as that of the Council of Chalcedon and who, in fact, anticipated the key formulations of Chalcedonian spirituality by four centuries or so.
In addition to the doctrine of the person of Christ, however, there were other areas of doctrine that might have made the spirituality of Pseudo-Dionysius seem suspect, particularly when it would come to the West. One of these was the status of sacraments administered by priests who were themselves not in a state of grace, the issue in the Donatist controversy that occupied a large part of Augustine's public life. In Epistle 8, 31. Dionysius takes up the question of "impious priests or those convicted of some other
unseemliness," and asks: "How then ____________________
28.Pseudo-Dionysius, The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy 3.13 (p. 222 below).
29.John of Scythopolis, Scholia on "The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy" 3.13, Patrologia Graeca, 4: 149-52. 30.Ibid., 197.
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could the priests be the interpreters of God? ... Living in darkness, how could they bring light to others?" To this he answers: "He who does not bestow illumination is thereby excluded from the priestly order and from the power reserved to the priesthood. For he is unilluminated.... This is no priest. He is an enemy, deceitful, selfdeluded, a wolf in sheep's clothing ready to attack the people of God." Now these are the ideas, and in some instances even the very phrases, of the rigoristic and "puritanical" spirituality against which Augustine contended at the beginning of the fifth century. Petilianus, the Donatist bishop of Cirta in Numidia, as quoted by Augustine, used the words of Matthew 7:15-16 about "wolves in sheep's clothing" as a description of the Catholic clergy, 32. and he stated the stern demands of Donatist spirituality when he declared: "We look to the conscience of the one who administers the sacrament in a state of holiness to cleanse that of the one who receives it. ” 33. At least in the passage just quoted from Epistle 8, this would
also appear to be the position of PseudoDionysius. The controversy over the schism occasioned by Donatist spirituality was almost exclusively Western, chiefly North African, although the emperor Constantine and several of his successors were obliged to deal with Donatism both as schism and as sedition. 34.
Chiefly it was the spirituality of Augustine in which, through the definition of sacramental character as a gift distinct from the gift of sacramental grace itself, it became possible to root the holiness of the Church in the objective holiness of the sacraments rather than in the subjective holiness of either the minister or the recipient of the sacraments. Yet there are parallels to this in the spirituality of the Greek church fathers. Basil of Caesarea, for example, asserted that "the Church of God would be pure" by virtue of its fidelity to the teaching of the fathers of the Council of Nicaea, 35. and he made no reference to the state of
sanctification of either clergy or members as a condition of this purity. But as one scholar has noted, there is in Dionysius's spirituality as it deals with the Church and the sacraments "only one concept that is emphasized above all: the measure of light imparted is determined by the condition of the subject." 36. Despite the authorities
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32.Augustine, Answer to the Letters of Petilianus, Bishop of Cirta ii.16.36. 33.Ibid. ii.3.6.
34.Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History x. 5.18-20. 35.Basil of Caesarea, Epistle 114.
36.Joseph Stiglmayr, "Die Lehre von den Sakramenten und der Kirche nach Ps.-Dionysius," Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie 22 (1898): 303.
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such as Cyprian, with whom Pseudo-Dionysius manifests some affinities, 37. who might be claimed for this concept, such a spirituality does seem to lead, when consistently carried out, closer to the Donatist than to the Augustinian definition of the holiness of the Church.
Potentially more dangerous than these overt statements of Dionysius, however, is the place that is
occupied (and, even more, the place that is not occupied) in his spirituality by the cardinal doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation. 38. In his Trinitarian doctrine, to quote René Roques, Dionysius "appears to be substantially orthodox," 39. and his Trinitarian language is quite conventional. Elsewhere Roques shows that for Proclus "all the orders of reality are divided into three terms.... All reality is conceived of in a triadic model." 40. In adapting this triadic model to the ecclesiastical and celestial hierarchies, Dionysius elaborated the analogy of the uncreated divine Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit with these created trinities. When Dionysian spirituality emigrated to the West, it could therefore attach itself to Saint
Augustine's idea of the "vestiges of the Trinity" in the human mind, producing the interaction that becomes visible, for example, in the spirituality of Bonaventure. 41. But for the understanding of that "emigration" to the West, it is essential to keep in mind the fundamental difference between the Trinitarian spirituality of Pseudo-Dionysius and the Trinitarian spirituality of Augustine in On the Trinity. Augustine felt entitled to propose such analogies only after he had expounded, both theologically and exegetically, the Catholic dogma of the Trinity, with its full implications for spirituality and morals. On the other hand, Dionysius manifests relatively little interest in the dogma of the Trinity as such, and his spirituality moves immediately into the analogies.
The most notorious statement—or, as the Yugoslav scholar Jossip Marić calls it, "the most celebrated formula" 42. —of Dionysian spirituality, and the one with the most momentous consequences for its Westward odyssey, affected the doctrine of the person of Christ rather than the doctrine of the Trinity as such. It occurred in the fourth of
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37.Cf. René Roques, L'Univers dionysien (see p. 5 above), p. 297, n. 5. 38.See the comments in my "Introduction" to Maximus Confessor, pp. 6-7. 39.Roques, L'Univers dionysien, p. 305.
40.Ibid., pp. 73, 75.
41.See the Introduction to the volume of Bonaventure in this series.
42.Jossip Marić, "Pseudo-Dionysii Areopagitae formula christologica celeberrima de Christi activitate thendrica: Secunda quaestio praevia ad Novam Apologiam Honorii I papae," Bogoslovska smotra 20 (1932): 105-73.
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the Epistles: "It was not by virtue of being God that he did divine things, not by virtue of being a man that he did what was human, but rather, by the fact of being God-made-man he accomplished something new in our midst—the activity of the God-man." 43. So, at any rate, the text has been transmitted. In some versions of the transmission, however, the crucial phrase "something new in our midst, the activity of the God-man [kainēn tina tēn theandrikēn energeian]" is replaced by "a single activity of the God-man [mian theandrikēn energeian]," making Dionysius an even more explicit proponent of the theory that there was in the incarnate Logos a single "operation [energeia]." The story of the controversy occasioned by the Dionysian formula has been told several times, 44. but it is pertinent also to this account of the odyssey of Dionysian spirituality. If Dionysius said that there was "a single activity of the God-man," but even if he only said that there was "the activity of the God-man," this is still in the singular; and that is the crucial problem. For the status of Dionysian spirituality in the medieval West, consequently, it is an inescapable question: How did Pseudo-Dionysius manage to escape a condemnation that, in the course of these very controversies over "one operation [energeia]" or "two operations [energeiai]" and over "one will" or "two wills" in Christ, struck down not only Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople, Bishop of New Rome, but Pope Honorius I, Bishop of Old Rome?
To be sure, modern Western scholarship has not dealt fairly with all of this. Thus it was a manifest distortion when the nineteenth-century Protestant historian of dogma, Ferdinand Christian Baur, charged that Dionysius "substituted something quite different for the factual Incarnation," or when an even more eminent nineteenth-century Protestant historian of dogma, Adolf von Harnack, concluded that for Dionysius "the historical Christ is ... a symbol of the universal cleansing and sanctifying activity" of the Logos and little more. 45. Therefore it is a useful corrective for scholars when Hans Urs von Balthasar points out that "the Monophysitism of the Areopagite, which is often treated as though it were an obvious fact, does not seem
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43.Dionysius, Epistle 4, p. 265 below.
44.With references to previous literature, cf. Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, 2: 6566.
45.Adolf von Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 3 vols. (5th ed.; Tübingen, 1931), vol. 2, p. 170.
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to have been established" historically. 46. Whatever the status of his alleged "Monophysitism" may be, however, his "Monenergism" does indeed seem to be an "obvious fact"; and Monenergism was
condemned, too. That remains so even after putting as charitable a construction as possible on his words. It has been argued that his interest was in spirituality rather than in the nuances of dogmatics, and that therefore he could not have anticipated the technical debate over whether "operation [energeia]" belonged to "nature" or to "person [hypostasis]." This allowed him to ascribe it in the singular to the Godman rather than in the plural to each of the natures. But such an exoneration would do no more than to put his
statement into the same class with that of Pope Honorius. For Honorius affirmed: "We confess a single will [unam voluntatem] of our Lord Jesus Christ, because our nature has truly been assumed by the divinity." 47. In the simple and literal sense of the words, then, Honorius was clearly a "Monothelete," and Dionysius was a "Monenergist." That is to say, each of them espoused a spirituality that required a
singular in such formulas, whereas the official doctrine eventually declared for the dual form and condemned the single. And yet the hapless Pope Honorius was hereticized by the Third Council of
Constantinople in 681, with repercussions that could still be heard in the debates over papal infallibility at the First Council of the Vatican in 1870. But Dionysius was rescued and given the position of what we must, somewhat anachronistically, call an "apostolic father." Thomas Aquinas does not seem even to have mentioned the case of Pope Honorius, but he quoted Dionysius about 1,700 times.
One reason for this success is that the pseudonym worked. The brief reference to "Dionysius the Areopagite" in Acts 17:34 was simply too fascinating to be left alone. As the story of Barnabas in the Book of Acts quickly led to the tradition that he was the first bishop of Cyprus or of Milan and that he was the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews or of the epistle that bears his name, so the Athenian convert was to acquire first a diocese and then an authorship (and then a second diocese). If we are to believe Eusebius,
48. Dionysius of Corinth (about whom we apparently know nothing except what Eusebius re-
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46.Hans Urs von Balthasar, "Scholienwerk," p. 17. 47.Honorius I, Epistle 4, Patrologia Latina, 40: 472. 48.Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History iii.4.11.
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ports) identified Dionysius the Areopagite as the first bishop of Athens. This citation occurs in a chapter of Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History devoted to documenting the apostolic succession of various sees. Eusebius, with his penchant for apostolic succession, could be counted on not to miss any references to the continuity between the immediate pupils of the apostles and the episcopal centers of his own time.
Significantly, it was this very Eusebian penchant that helped to endear his history, as it was reworked and incorporated into the Tripartite History of Cassiodorus, to medieval Western readers as well. 49. In the course of this migration to the West, Dionysius the Areopagite acquired even further prestige, when Hilduin of Saint-Denis, who was responsible for the first translation of the Corpus Areopagiticum into Latin, also wrote a hagiographical account of the Passio sanctissimi Dionysii, 50. in which the Areopagite was identified with Dionysius, bishop of Paris.
Now anyone who had been converted by a sermon of Saint Paul that has been cited almost from the beginning as the justification for doing apologetics as part of the task of theology could have been expected to describe in writing the nature of his conversion and the meaning of the true relation between Athens and Jerusalem. That he did so in the form of treatises in spirituality, rather than of treatises that were explicitly apologetic in methodology and purpose, only helped to confirm his status in the West, as it had in the East. What is surprising, at least in some ways, is not that some writings were eventually
fathered on him, but that it took so long. In a monograph written almost a century ago but still extremely important, Stiglmayr painstakingly assembled practically all of the evidence then available on the almost immediate and almost complete success of the pseudonymity. Even though von Balthasar suggests, a bit coyly, that John of Scythopolis may have known more than he would let on about who the real author of the Corpus Areopagiticum was, 51. he does not seem to want us to take this obiter dictum very seriously. In a way, however, it is tautological to say that the odyssey of this pseudonymous work was successful: The spirituality of Dionysius was accepted as authoritative also in the West because he was believed to carry authority. It seems to be a valid generalization that
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49.On the Tripartite History, see James J. O'Donnell, Cassiodorus (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1979), pp. 246-47.
50.
Patrologia Latina, 106: 23-50. 51.Balthasar, "Scholienwerk," p. 38.
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pseudonymity usually succeeds only if it manages to set down on paper what everyone—or at least the "right people"—will recognize as commonly received truth. Thus, to advert to the other works mentioned at the beginning, after the debates during the century between the death of Augustine in 430 and the Synod of Orange in 529, "everyone knew" that Augustine had not really taught double predestination after all; and it only remained for the Hypomnēsticon to supply pseudonymous documentation of that common consciousness. By the ninth century, the spirituality devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary even in the Latin West had reached the point where a pseudonymous epistle such as Cogitis me, proceeding on the basis of the liturgical celebration of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin as "happy [felix]" and "blessed [beata]," could urge that there was something special about how she received birth, not only about how she gave birth: Pseudonymity here was a way for Marian spirituality about the Immaculate Conception to begin the development that would finally carry it, about a millennium later, to the status of Marian dogma.
As noted earlier, it had been the historic accomplishment of Maximus Confessor to purge Dionysian spirituality of the interpretations that would have connected it to one or another heresy. The special status of Maximus as a saint and hero of the faith for both West and East lent his aura also to the Dionysian writings. The medieval Western use of Dionysius carried this process still further. Thus, to cite one example among literally thousands, Thomas Aquinas, commenting on a passage from The Divine Names, quoted the authority of Dionysius for the thesis that "from creatures we arrive at God in three ways, namely, by way of causality, by way of removal, and by way of eminence." 52. As Chenu says, "de facto, the entire Dionysian doctrine is thus reversed." 53.
Through his first odyssey, from the heretical East to the Orthodox East, the spirituality of this
"Maximized" Dionysius had been purged of any lingering suspicions about his orthodoxy, well before the time of his second odyssey, from the Orthodox East to the Catholic West. Even the association of this spirituality with the mystifying speculations of John the Scot, through his translation of Dionysius, did not manage to deprive it of this standing; and, after all, John the
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52.Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the "Sentences" i.3.div.
53.Marie-Dominique Chenu, Toward Understanding Saint Thomas, trans. A.-M. Landry and D. Hughes (Chicago, 1964), p. 229.
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Scot translated Maximus as well. The massive compilations by Philippe Chevallier have begun to make possible an assessment of the treatment given to the Corpus by successive Latin translators, up to and including Ficino; 54. and it has become a widely accepted view that Dionysian spirituality and speculation
may have been more influential in the West than in the East. If that is true, it was not primarily because of any disaffection toward it in the East, but because of the plethora of other works embodying it. In the West, by contrast, there had been no Origen, no Gregory of Nyssa; but there had, of course, been an Augustine. As I mentioned earlier, the most fascinating aspect of the westward odyssey of Dionysian spirituality is the interaction between the Neoplatonism of Dionysius and the Neoplatonism of Augustine (with perhaps the Neoplatonism of Boethius as a third partner). Each had a distinctive metaphysic; but more importantly, each was the fountainhead for a distinctive piety and devotion. And when they came together, as for example in both Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, the result was a spirituality in which intellectuality and fervor were fused—as indeed they had uniquely been in the writings collected here. ____________________
54.Philippe Chevalier, Dionysiaca. Recueil donnant l'ensemble des traditions latines des ouvrages attribués au Denys de l'Aréopage, 2 vols. (Paris, 1937-1950).
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II
Influence and noninfluence of Dionysius in the Western Middle Ages
Jean Leclercq
This title recalls the change and development in our knowledge concerning the influence of Dionysius during the last fifty years. Historians have long since recognized his importance for the great masters of scholastic theology from the thirteenth century onward. Since the 1930s, the works of Etienne Gilson have drawn attention to the fact that spiritual authors of the twelfth century made use of ideas and terminology that were heralded by and perhaps even originated with the Greek fathers and certain Byzantine writers. Some researchers, following Gilson's lead, actually found parallels in which they thought they could detect monastic, and especially Cistercian, influence. This fascinating discovery, however, caused them to go too far in that direction. This state of affairs lasted until 1953 when, at the time of the eighth centenary of the death of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, a closer verification was begun of Dionysius's influence. Conjecture was, in some cases, still presented as proof. Thirty years later, particularly during the last decade, we have come to a more balanced position, as a result of intense studies carried out especially in the United States. Not only can we see more clearly the fact and extent of Dionysius's influence, but we are in a position to interpret the facts and get a glimpse of the reason for them. I shall present an attempt at an explanation by way of conclusion, following an examination of the results that have been gleaned from this chapter of Western doctrinal history.
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I A Hidden Presence
Saint Gregory the Great, father of Western medieval spirituality, refers to Dionysius as "ancient and venerable Father" 1. and quotes him on the subject of angels. But did he really know his works? It has long been in some doubt because Gregory himself claimed he "did not know Greek." The most recent research, however, has shown that his statement, when seen in historical and literary context, should not be taken literally. Even if he did not write Greek, he read and understood it, and the language would have
influenced his education during the six years he spent in Constantinople. He was certainly familiar with Dionysius's doctrine on celestial hierarchies. He may even have known his teaching on the primacy of those "men of God" who have received true authority and power from the Holy Spirit: His Dialogues are filled with those charismatic persons who have had no human teacher. While not sharing all of Dionysius's teaching on this point or on others, he was surely marked by it. 2.
It is even likely that when Saint Gregory returned to Rome, he brought with him a copy of the complete works of Dionysius in Greek. 3. Yet, during the seventh and eighth centuries, the few references to this Doctor of the Church—for he was known as such from then on—are not to be found in those writings intended to nourish the spiritual life. The same situation obtained at the beginning of the Carolingian Age and it was not until the year 827 that a copy of his works was sent by the Byzantine Emperor Michael the Stammerer to King Louis the Pious, marking the beginning of a new ascendancy for Dionysius.
About the year 838, Hilduin, abbot of the monastery near Paris placed under the patronage of Dionysius, undertook a translation of his works; he accomplished the task amid such difficult conditions, however, that the translation is almost unintelligible. Charles (II) the Bald requested the Irishman John Scotus, also called Eriugena, to make a fresh translation and this he finished in 862. Anastasius, the
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1.In Evang., Homily 34, 12, in Patrologia Latina, vol. 76, 1254.
2.Giorgio Grocco, Uomini di Dio. Uomini di società nell'alto medievo, in "Ricerche di storia sociale e religiosa" 12 (1977): 191-93.
3.For the facts and texts mentioned in the following pages, see bibliographical references in the article "Denys l'Aréopagite. En Occident," in the Dictionnaire de spiritualité, vol. 3 (Paris, 1957).
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papal librarian, brought out a revision of Eriugena's translation in 875 to which he added clarifying remarks. Eriugena himself, in his own works, revealed the influence of Dionysius. Only one record from the eleventh century and two from the twelfth century have come down to us on Eriugena's Homily on the Prologue of St John; all the other manuscripts are of a later date. Still they form part of the Collection of Homilies, which was known only in and through the liturgy. 4. There is a ninth-century manuscript at Laon of his Commentary on St John. 5. It is only at the beginning of the twelfth century that the masters of the Cathedral school of Laon introduced extracts from this work into the Sentences and the Gloss; in this manner Dionysian concepts found their way into the writings of Peter Lombard and others. There are few references to Dionysius in scholastic theology before the tenth and eleventh centuries; translations of his works existed, yet his presence was, as it were, below the surface. Quite suddenly it began to emerge, although his influence remained limited.
Within traditional monasticism—the form that came to be known as Benedictine—little attention was paid to Dionysius. 6. Honorius of Autun was an exception. Abbot Suger (d. 1151) of Saint-Denis borrowed some ideas from Dionysius to explain the symbolism of light in the basilica he had built. Also, one of the monks of Saint-Denis, John Sarrazin, whose name would otherwise be forgotten, wrote a commentary on The Celestial Hierarchy in 1140; he then made a translation of the work with a dedication to "Master John of Salisbury" 7. in 1165, in which he took into account the remarks of Anastasius. Thus we see that in the twelfth century, just as in the ninth, there were a few monks here and there, the most important of whom belonged to the monastery of Saint-Denis, who may have had no influence on their
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4.Edouard Jeauneau, Jean Scot, Homélie sur le Prologue de Jean [John Scotus, Homily on the Prologue of St John] (Paris, 1969), pp. 21-29 and 67.
5.Edouard Jeauneau, Commentaire sur l'Evangile de Jean [Commentary on Saint John's Gospel] (Paris, 1972), pp. 55-62.
6.For facts of medieval monastic history, see references and bibliography in Bernard McGinn, "Pseudo-Dionysius and the Early Cistercians," in One Yet Two, Monastic Tradition East and West, ed. M. Basil Pennington (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1976), pp. 200-41.
7.Edited text among the letters of John of Salisbury in P. L. 199: 143-44.
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own surroundings or tradition, but who nevertheless prepared the texts that would later be of use to others. This was the case among the Canons Regular. Hugh of Saint Victor had already edited two commentaries on The Celestial Hierarchy between 1125 and 1137, later revising and combining them as one. His successor, Richard of Saint Victor (d. 1173), was familiar with Dionysius through Hugh, though he owed him little else. Another Victorine, Thomas Gallus, the abbot of Verceil, was more in Hugh's debt. Because of Thomas and Hugh, the influence of Dionysius was felt by Gilbert of Poitiers at Chartres, as well as by the Porretains and others in Paris. From that time on, Dionysian influence was important for
Scholasticism, without going beyond the framework of speculative thought; it was scarcely felt at all in the field of spirituality.
What, we may ask, was the influence of Dionysius during the intense renewal brought about by the Cistercians? Two names dominate the scene at this time: Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and his friend William of Saint-Thierry. It had been thought complimentary to Saint Bernard to discern Dionysian traits in his works, but it has been necessary to show decisively that the Cistercian abbot owed him very little. 8.
The same is true of William of Saint-Thierry and Aelred of Rievaulx; there is no evidence of Greek influence in their works. 9. In his Commentary on the Song of Songs, Thomas the Cistercian "does not seem to care for Pseudo-Dionysius.... It is interesting to note the conspicuous lack of Dionysian ideas and terminology in Thomas's works ... Thomas, like Bernard, remains Latin." It is only much later that Alan of Lille (c. 1120-1202) made more of a case for Dionysius. 10. He is cited by Helinand of Froidmont (d. 1229) but with the comment that "his words evoke amazement and astonishment rather than knowledge." Helinand was satisfied with mentioning the words of Dionysius but was not concerned with the kind of academic debating that went on in the schools. The same was true for the Carthusians : both for Saint Bruno in his Commentary on the Psalms, and for Adam of Dryburgh, known as the Scot, who observed that the words of Dionysius were "profound but unclear (perplexa)."
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10.David N. Bell, "Love and Charity in the Commentary on the Song of Songs of Thomas the Cistercian," Cîteaux 29 (1978): 265; Ibid. 28 (1977): 213.
8.Edmond Boissard, "S. Bernard et le Pseudo-Aréopagite," Recherches de théologie ancienne et mediévale 26 (1958): 214-63.
9.David N. Bell, "Greek, Plotinus and the Education of William of Saint-Thierry," in Cîteaux Commentarii Cistercienses 30 (1979): 221-46.
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There is, however, an exception in the monastic tradition provided by Isaac of Stella (died c. 1169), a representative of the second generation of Cistercian spiritual writers. At one time Dionysius's influence on Isaac had been thought extensive; a more measured estimate today indicates that it was moderate and limited to a few ideas that he might just as well have obtained from the Latin tradition. It seems most likely that as a student, Isaac was familiar with the Dionysian texts; once in the monastery he was able to blend harmoniously his scholastic knowledge with what was proper to the Cistercian tradition. 11.
Moreover, at Clairvaux itself, some of the most prized possessions later on included all the works of Dionysius 12. as well as an important commentary that has been discovered just recently. 13. In addition, a sermon that took its inspiration from the writings of Dionysius and Eriugena was preached to the General Chapter of the Cistercian Order toward the close of the twelfth century by Garnier, an abbot of Clairvaux.
III Scholasticism, Mysticism, and Politics
The influence of Dionysius passed quite naturally from the schools of the twelfth century to those of the thirteenth. Among the Franciscans, Robert Grosseteste made the greatest contribution in this direction by bringing out a translation, with commentary, of the Dionysian corpus between 1240 and 1243. Shortly after, the Dominican Albert the Great provided a similar service, and the great doctors of the following generation were not content to do less. Thomas Aquinas wrote an explanation for several works and Saint Bonaventure hailed him as "the prince of mystics." 14. It was, in fact, in the area of mysticism that
Dionysius revealed all his potentiality. Aquinas, great saint and thinker as he was, had the ability, as someone has said, "to shift the
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11.McGinn, "Pseudo-Dionysius," pp. 230-34.
12.Ferruccio Gastaldelli, "Proposed Inventory for the Greek Fathers in the Library of Clairvaux," in One Yet Two, p. 403.
13.Ferruccio Gastaldelli, "Il manoscritto Troyes 1003 et il testo del commento di Guglielmo di Lucca al De divinis nominibus," Salesianum 41 (1979): 37-72.
14.Guntriem G. Bischoff, "Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, the Gnostic Myth," in The Spirituality of Western Christendom, ed. E. Rozanne Elder (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1976), p. 39; J. G. Bougerol, "St Bonaventure and Pseudo Dionysius," Etudes Franciscaines 28, Suppl. (1968): 33-123.
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points of emphasis and counterpoise mysticism with scholasticism" in a synthesis of perfect balance. 15. From then on, the works of Dionysius provided a powerful contribution in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to the spirituality that flowered in the Rhine valley and elsewhere among theologians of the "abstract school," as historians have termed it. Master Eckhart (d. 1327) proved capable of adopting fundamental Dionysian themes, "while changing the meaning substantially." Several other writers did more or less the same, each in his own way: Tauler (d. 1361); Ruysbroeck (d. 1381), Gerson (d. 1429), Nicholas of Cusa (d. 1464), Denis the Carthusian (d. 1471), Harphius (d. 1477), and Marsilio Ficino (d. 1499).
During the golden age of Spanish mysticism, Dionysius's presence is felt in the writings of the
Benedictine Abbot Cisneros (d. 1510) and among such Franciscan mystics as Francis of Osuna—here we limit ourselves to a mention of the greatest. His influence can also be traced in Saint John of the Cross and, later, in the Carmelite school of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and among the Jesuits and representatives of the French school, including Fénelon. He was debated as much as he was admired, and the resulting discussions avoided any interpretations that were either too simplified or too complicated. At the end of the nineteenth century, an innovation occurred in Benedictine tradition through M. Cécile Bruyère, abbess of SainteCécile de Solesmes. Acting apparently under the influence of Dom Paul Delatte, she presented a treatise on the life of monastic prayer that clearly pointed to the thought of Dionysius; 16. this well chosen experiment, however, provided insight only to those within a limited circle.
In any survey of Dionysian influence, we cannot bypass the area of ecclesiology, and all its links with politics, for in this realm the impact of Dionysius was very strong from the thirteenth century on. 17. ____________________
15.Sergej Averincer, "L'or dans le système des symboles de la culture byzantine," Studi medievali 20 (1979): 59.
16.Cécile Bruyère, La vie spirituelle et l'oraison d'après l'Écriture Sainte et la tradition monastique [Prayer and the spiritual life according to Sacred Scripture and the monastic tradition] (Solesmes, 1899).
17.J. Leclercq, Jean de Paris et l'ecclésiologie du XIIIème siècle [John of Paris and the ecclesiology of the 13th century] (Paris, 1942), pp. 80-81 and passim; Yves Congar, L'Eglise de S. Augustin à l'époque moderne [The Church from St Augustine to the modern age] (Paris, 1970), pp. 224-30.
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One of Dionysius's principles, often applied to political power both civil and religious, maintains that God's gifts are bestowed from on high through intermediaries who can guide others to the extent that they themselves are enlightened. What is deemed to be the case with the celestial hierarchy is considered to have a counterpart in the structure of the Church. Supporters of a pontifical theocracy concluded,
therefore, that the Pope held power over all. John of Paris and others thought that this was equally true in the temporal order, independently of spiritual power. Some of Dionysius's ideas thus served as a key to interpreting canon law, and traces of opposing explanations remained in political-religious disputes until recent times.
IV Conclusion: A Reflection on the History of Spirituality
The successive stages recording the influence of Dionysius in the West illustrate the major pathways in the entire evolution of spirituality in that half of Christendom.
Throughout the Middle Ages, the monastic order—Benedictine, Cistercian, and Carthusian—retained its identity with no appeal to the writings of Dionysius. In the twelfth century the Canons Regular took a definite turn in his direction, blazing a trail for him in Scholasticism. Dionysius's absence from monastic spirituality is even more significant when we realize that the abbeys possessed manuscripts of his works in translation that had been done by the monks. If they were unaware of him, their ignorance was willful. It was not that they rejected him; rather they felt he was unnecessary.
On the one hand, Dionysius was unclear, a fact pointedly noted by Hugh of Saint-Victor. 18. If someone wanted to teach Dionysius, he had to do a commentary. But the monastic vocation disallowed any opportunity to be a schoolmaster. Dionysius's ideas, moreover, were frequently abstract and had little
