"venerable alike for his antiquity and for the sublimity of the heavenly mysteries" with which he
dealt.^779 Pope Nicolas I. complained that the work had not been sent to him for approval," according
to the custom of the church" (861); but a few years later Anastasius, the papal librarian, highly
commended it (c. 865).
The Areopagitica stimulated an intuitive and speculative bent of mind, and became an
important factor in the development of scholastic and mystic theology. Hugo of St. Victor, Peter
the Lombard, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Robert Grosseteste, and Dionysius Carthusianus
wrote commentaries on them, and drew from them inspiration for their own writings.^780 The
Platonists of the Italian renaissance likewise were influenced by them.
Dante places Dionysius among the theologians in the heaven of the sun:
"Thou seest next the lustre of that taper,
Which in the flesh below looked most within
The angelic nature and its ministry."^781
Luther called him a dreamer, and this was one of his heretical views which the Sorbonne of
Paris condemned.
The Several Writings.
The Dionysian writings, as far as preserved, are four treatises addressed to Timothy, his
"fellow-presbyter," namely: 1) On the Celestial Hierarchy ( ). 2) On the
Ecclesiastical Hierarchy ( ). 3) On the Divine Names ( μ ). 4)
On Mystic Theology ( μ ). To these are added ten letters addressed to various persons
of the apostolic age.^782
The System of Dionysius.
These books reveal the same authorship and the same system of mystic symbolism, in which
Neo-Platonism and Christianity are interwoven. The last phase of Hellenic philosophy which
heretofore had been hostile to the church, is here made subservient to it. The connecting ideas are
the progressive revelation of the infinite, the hierarchic triads, the negative conception of evil, and
the striving of man after mystic union with the transcendent God. The system is a counterpart of
the Graeco-Jewish theology, of Philo of Alexandria, who in similar manner mingled the Platonic
philosophy with the Mosaic religion. The Areopagite and Philo teach theology in the garb of
philosophy; both appeal to Scripture, tradition, and reason; both go behind the letter of the Bible
and the facts of history to a deeper symbolic and allegoric meaning; both adulterate the revealed
truths by foreign elements. But Philo is confined to the Old Testament, and ignores the New, which
was then not yet written; while the system of the Areopagite is a sort of philosophy of Christianity.
The Areopagite reverently ascends the heights and sounds the depths of metaphysical and
religious speculation, and makes the impression of profound insight and sublime spirituality; and
hence he exerted such a charm upon the great schoolmen and mystics of the middle ages. But he(^779) Other Latin versions were made afterwards by Johannes Sarracinus in the twelfth century, by Ambrosius Camaldulensis
in the fifteenth, by Corderius in the seventeenth.
(^780) St. Thomas, the "Angelic Doctor," is so full of quotations from Dionysius that Corderius says, he drew from him
"totam fere doctrinam theologicam." Migne I. 96.
(^781) Paradiso, X. 115.
(^782) An eleventh letter which exists only in Latin (said to have been written by Scotus Erigena), and a Latin Liturgy of
Dionysius (published by Renaudot and in Migne’s ed. I. 1123-1132), are spurious.