Severians quoted them as an authority for their Monophysitic Christology and against the Council
of Chalcedon; and in reply to the objection that they were unknown, they asserted that Cyril of
Alexandria had used them against the Nestorians. If this be so, they must have existed before 444,
when Cyril died; but no trace can be found in Cyril’s writings. On the other hand, Dionysius
presupposes the christological controversies of the fifth century, and shows a leaning to Monophysitic
views, and a familiarity with the last and best representatives of Neo-Platonism, especially with
Proclus, who died in Athens, a.d. 485. The resemblance is so strong that the admirers of Dionysius
charged Proclus with plagiarism.^775 The writer then was a Christian Neo-Platonist who wrote
towards the close of the fifth or the beginning of the sixth century in Greece or in Egypt, and who
by a literary fiction clothed his religious speculations with the name and authority of the first
Christian bishop of Athens.^776
In the same way the pseudo-Clementine writings were assigned to the first bishop of Rome.
The Fortunes of Pseudo-Dionysius.
Pseudo-Dionysius appears first in the interest of the heretical doctrine of one nature and
one will in the person of Christ.^777 But he soon commended himself even more to orthodox
theologians. He was commented on by Johannes Scythopolitanus in the sixth century, and by St.
Maximus Confessor in the seventh. John of Damascus often quotes him as high authority. Even
Photius, who as a critic doubted the genuineness, numbers him among the great church teachers
and praises his depth of thought.^778
In the West the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius were first noticed about 590 by Pope Gregory
I., who probably became acquainted with them while ambassador at Constantinople. Pope Hadrian
I. mentions them in a letter to Charlemagne. The Emperor Michael II. the Stammerer, sent a copy
to Louis the Pious, 827. Their arrival at St. Denis on the eve of the feast of the saint who reposed
there, was followed by no less than nineteen miraculous cures in the neighborhood. They naturally
recalled the memory of the patron-saint of France, and were traced to his authorship. The emperor
instructed Hilduin, the abbot of St. Denis, to translate them into Latin; but his scholarship was not
equal to the task. John Scotus Erigena, the best Greek scholar in the West, at the request of Charles
the Bald, prepared a literal translation with comments, about 850, and praised the author as
(^775) Westcott asserts (p. 6) that the coincidences with Damascius, the second in succession from Proclus, and the last
Platonic teacher at Athens, are even more remarkable. He was of Syrian origin.
(^776) Different conjectures as to the author, time and place of composition: 1) A pseudonymous Dionysius (of Egypt) at
the end of the fifth century. Gieseler, Engelhardt, Dorner, and others. 2) Dionysius of Alexandria, d. 265. Baratier. 3) Another
Dionysius of the fourth century. 4) During the Eutychian and Nestorian controversies. Le Nourry. 5) A Pseudo-Dionysius of
the third century, who wished to introduce the Eleusynian mysteries into the church. Baumgarten Crusius. 6) Apollinaris the
elder, d. 360. 7) Apollinaris the younger, d. 370. Laurentius Valla. 8) Synesius of Ptolemais, c. 410. La Croze. 9) Peter Gnapheus
or Fullo, patriarch of Constantinople. Le Quien. 10) A writer in Edessa, or under the influence of the Edessene school, between
480 and 520. Westcott.—See the Prolegomena of Le Nourry, De Rubeis, Corderius, in the first vol. of Migne’s ed., and Lupton,
l.c.
(^777) The Monothelites appealed to a passage in Ep. IV. ad Caium. See Hefele, III. 127 sq. Dorner (II. 196 sqq.) correctly
represents the mystic Christology of Pseudo-Dionysius as a connecting link between Monophysitism and the orthodox dogma.
(^778) The first book which he notices in his "Bibliotheca" (about 845) is a defense of the genuineness of the Dionysian
writings by a presbyter Theodorus, who mentions four objections: 1) they were unknown to the earlier fathers; 2) they are not
mentioned in the catalogues of writing by Eusebius; 3) they are filled with comments on church traditions which grew by degrees
long after the apostolic age; 4) they quote an epistle of Ignatius, written on his way to martyrdom under Trojan. Photius seems
to think that the objections are stronger than the answers of Theodorus. See Neander, III. 170; Westcott, l.c. p. 4, and
Hergenroether, Photius, III. 29 and 331.