Paris, between Greek philosophy and Christian theology, and acquired an almost apostolic authority.
He furnishes one of the most remarkable examples of the posthumous influence of unknown
authorship and of the power of the dead over the living. For centuries he was regarded as the prince
of theologians. He represented to the Greek and Latin church the esoteric wisdom of the gospel,
and the mysterious harmony between faith and reason and between the celestial and terrestrial
hierarchy.
Pseudo-Dionysius is a philosophical counterpart of Pseudo-Isidor: both are pious frauds in
the interest of the catholic system, the one with regard to theology, the other with regard to church
polity; both reflect the uncritical character of mediaeval Christianity; both derived from the belief
in their antiquity a fictitious importance far beyond their intrinsic merits. Doubts were entertained
of the genuineness of the Areopagitica by Laurentius Valla, Erasmus, and Cardinal Cajetan; but it
was only in the seventeenth century that the illusion of the identity of Pseudo-Dionysius with the
apostolic convert and the patron-saint of France was finally dispelled by the torch of historical
criticism. Since that time his writings have lost their authority and attraction; but they will always
occupy a prominent place among the curiosities of literature, and among the most remarkable
systems of mystic philosophy.
Authorship.
Who is the real author of those productions? The writer is called simply Dionysius, and
only once.^772 He repeatedly mentions an unknown Hierotheos, as his teacher; but he praises also
"the divine Paul," as the spiritual guide of both, and addresses persons who bear apostolic names,
as Timothy, Titus, Caius, Polycarp, and St. John. He refers to a visit he made with Hierotheos, and
with James, the brother of the Lord (ajdelfovqeo"), and Peter, "the chief and noblest head of the
inspired apostles," to gaze upon the (dead) body of her (Mary) who was "the beginning of life and
the recipient of God;" on which occasion Hierotheos gave utterance to their feelings in ecstatic
hymns. It is evident then that he either lived in the apostolic age and its surroundings, or that he
transferred himself back in imagination to that age.^773 The former alternative is impossible. The
inflated style, the reference to later persons (as Ignatius of Antioch and Clement of Alexandria),
the acquaintance with Neo-Platonic ideas, the appeal to the "old tradition" (ajrcai'a paravdosi") of
the church as well as the Scriptures, and the elaborate system of church polity and ritual which he
presupposes, clearly prove his post-apostolic origin. He was not known to Eusebius or Jerome or
any ecclesiastical author before 533. In that year his writings were first mentioned in a conference
between orthodox bishops and heretical Severians at Constantinople under Justinian I.^774 The
of Charlemagne and the Acta Dionys., which were first printed in the Acta Sanct. mens. Oct. IV. 792. After that time it was
currently believed that Dionysius was sent by Pope Clement of Rome to Gaul with twelve companions, or (according to another
tradition) with a presbyter Rusticus, and a deacon Eleutherius, and that he suffered martyrdom with them under Domitian. His
identity with the Areopagite became almost an article of faith; and when Abélard dared to call it in question, he was expelled
from St. Denis as a dangerous heretic. It has been conclusively disproved by Launoy, Sirmond, Morinus, Le Nourry, Daillé;
and yet it still finds defenders among French Catholics, e.g. the Archbishop Darboy of Paris, who was shot by the Commune
in May, 1871. The Abbé Dulac thus epigrammatically expresses this exploded tradition (Oeuvres de Saint Denis, 1865, p. 13):
"Né dans Athènes, Lutèce d’Orient, il meurt à Lutèce, Athènes d’Occident; successivement epoux de deux églises, dont l’une
possédera son borceau, et l’autre sa tombe. Montmartre vaudra la colline de Mars."(^772) In Ep. VII. 3, where Agollophanes addresses him: "O Dionysius."
(^773) Hipler and Boehmer assume that those names do not refer to the well-known apostolic characters, but this is untenable.
(^774) See the Collatio Catholicorum cum Severianis in Mansi, VIII. 817 sqq., and an account of the conference in Walch’s
Ketzergeschichte, VII 134 sqq.