in Egypt the miraculous solar eclipse at the time of the crucifixion:^791 "Either the God of nature is
suffering, or He sympathizes with a suffering God."^792 No such sentence occurs in the writings of
Dionysius as his own utterance; but a similar one is attributed by him to the sophist Apollophanes,
his fellow-student at Heliopolis.^793
The Roman Breviary has given solemn sanction, for devotional purposes, to several historical
errors connected with Dionysius the Areopagite: 1) his identity with the French St. Denis of the
third century; 2) his authorship of the books upon "The Names of God," upon "The Orders in
Heaven and in the Church," upon "The Mystic Theology," and "divers others," which cannot have
been written before the end of the fifth century; 3) his witness of the supernatural eclipse at the
time of the crucifixion, and his exclamation just referred to, which he himself ascribes to
Apollophanes. The Breviary also relates that Dionysius was sent by Pope Clement of Rome to Gaul
with Rusticus, a priest, and Eleutherius, a deacon; that he was tortured with fire upon a grating,
and beheaded with an axe on the 9th day of October in Domitian’s reign, being over a hundred
years old, but that "after his head was cut off, he took it in his hands and walked two hundred paces,
carrying it all the while!"^794
§ 138. Prevailing Ignorance in the Western Church.
The ancient Roman civilization began to decline soon after the reign of the Antonines, and was
overthrown at last by the Northern barbarians. The treasures of literature and art were buried, and
a dark night settled over Europe. The few scholars felt isolated and sad. Gregory, of Tours (540–594)
complains, in the Preface to his Church History of the Franks, that the study of letters had nearly
perished from Gaul, and that no man could be found who was able to commit to writing the events
of the times.^795
"Middle Ages" and "Dark Ages" have become synonymous terms. The tenth century is
emphatically called the iron age, or the saeculum obscurum.^796 The seventh and eighth were no
I, 686) regards this as "firmissimum argumentum pro primatu Petri d consequeenter (?) Pontificum Romanorumm ejusdem
successorum."(^791) Matt. 27:45; Mark 15:33; Luke 23:44. See the notes in Lange, on Matthew, p. 525 (Am. ed.).
792
The exclamation is variously given:ὁα γνωστοςἐνσαρκὶπάσχειθεόςby Syngelus); orη τὸθει̑ονπάσχει,η τω̑
πάσχοντισυμπάσχει("Aut Deus patitur, aut patienti compatitur"), or, as the Roman Breviary has it: "Aut Deus naturae patitur,
aut mundi machina dissolvitur," "Either the God of nature is suffering, or the fabric of the world is breaking up." See Corderius
in his annotations to Ep. VII., in Migne, I. 1083, and Halloix, in Vita S. Dion., ibid. II. 698. The exclamation of Dionysius is
sometimes (even by so accurate a scholar as Dr. Westcott, l.c., p. 8) erroneously traced to the 7th Ep. of Dion., as a response
to the exclamation of Apollophanes.
(^793) In Ep. VII. 2, where Dionysius asks Polycarp to silence the objections of Apollophanes to Christianity and to remind
him of that incident when be exclaimed:ταυ̑τα,ω καλὲ Διονύσιε,θείων ἀμοιβαὶ πραγμάτων, "Istae O praeclare Dionysi,
divinarum sunt vicissitudines rerum." The same incident is alluded to in the spurious eleventh letter addressed to Apollophanes
himself. So Suidas also gives the exclamation of Apollophanes, sub verboΔιον.
(^794) Brev. Rom. for Oct. 9, in the English ed. of the Marquess of Bute, vol. II. 1311. Even Alban Butler, in his Lives of
the Saints (Oct. 9), rejects the fable of the identity of the two Dionysii.
(^795) In Migne’s ed., Tom. LXXIX. 159.
(^796) According to the terminology of Cave and others, the 7th century is called Saeculum Monotheleticum; the eighth, S.
Eiconoclasticum; the ninth, S. Photianum; the eleventh, S. Hildebrandinum; the twelfth, S. Waldenses; the thirteenth, S.