| Full name | "Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite" |
|---|---|
| Other names | "Pseudo-Dionysius", "Pseudo-Denys", mistakenly identified as "Dionysius the Areopagite" |
| Born | unknown, 5th to 6th century AD |
| Died | unknown, 5th to 6th century AD |
| Era | Ancient philosophy, Medieval philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Neoplatonism, Christian theology |
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Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, also known as Pseudo-Denys, was a Christian theologian and philosopher of the late 5th to early 6th century, the author of the Corpus Areopagiticum (before 532). The author is identified as "Dionysos" in the corpus, which later incorrectly came to be attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite, the Athenian convert of St. Paul mentioned in Acts 17:34.[1] His surviving works include Divine Names, Mystical Theology,[2] Celestial Hierarchy, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, and various epistles.[3] Some other works, such as Theological Outlines, are presumed to be lost.
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His works are mystical and show strong Neoplatonic influence. For example he uses Plotinus' well-known analogy of a sculptor cutting away that which does not enhance the desired image. He shows familiarity with Proclus, which indicates he wrote no earlier than the 5th century, as well as influence from Saint Clement of Alexandria, the Cappadocian Fathers, Origen of Alexandria, and others. There is a distinct difference between Neoplatonism and Eastern Christianity. In Neoplatonism, it is often said, all life returns to the source to be stripped of individual identity, a process called henosis (see Iamblichus). However, in orthodox Christianity, theosis restores the Likeness of God in man by grace (by being united to God the Holy Trinity through participation in His divine energies).[4] The liturgical references in his writings also date his works after the 4th century.
He appears to have belonged to the group which attempted to form a compromise position between monophysitism and the orthodox teaching. His writings were first cited in 519 in a work by Severus of Antioch, Adversus apologiam Juliani, who cited the Fourth Letter.[5] Dionysius was initially used by monophysites to back up parts of their arguments, but his writings were eventually adopted by other church theologians as well, primarily due to the work of John of Scythopolis and Maximus the Confessor in producing an orthodox interpretation.[6] The Dionysian writings and their mystical teaching were universally accepted throughout the East, amongst both Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians. St. Gregory Palamas, for example, in referring to these writings, calls the author, "an unerring beholder of divine things." And in the West, the manuscripts grew to be very popular amongst theologians in the Middle Ages -- Thomas Aquinas cites Pseudo-Dionysius over 1700 times.[7] Dionysius' portrayal of the "via negativa" was particularly influential among contemplatives and mystical theologians.[8] Debates over the authenticity of the authorship of Dionysian corpus, however, began in the Renaissance.
During the medieval period Saint Dionysius the Areopagite and Saint Denis of Paris were considered to be the same "Dionysius" who had been converted by Saint Paul in Acts 17:34.[9] Medieval tradition held that Saint Dionysius the Areopagite had traveled to Rome and then was commissioned by the Pope to preach in Gall (France), where he was martyred.[10] This confusion of historical detail was compounded by the common acceptance of Pseudo-Dionysius's writings as the authentic work of the Biblical Dionysius of Acts 17:34. The great Abbey of Saint-Denis just north of Paris claimed to have the relics of Dionysius. Around 1121, Pierre Abélard, a Benedictine monk at Saint Denis Basilica, turned his attention to the story of their patron saint, and disentangled the three different Dionysiuses. The monks were offended at the apparent demotion of Saint Denis, and Abélard did not remain long at Saint Denis. The confusion over the text might stem from the text being an oral tradition (declamatio) that was only at a later date finally put to record. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy "It must also be recognized that 'forgery' is a modern notion. Like Plotinus and the Cappadocian Fathers before him, Dionysius does not claim to be an innovator, but rather a communicator of a tradition." [11]
The monastery of St. Denis, which had inadvertently conflated the two Dionysiuses, had a good Greek edition of Pseudo-Dionysius's works given to them by Charles the Bald, which was translated into Latin by John Scotus Eriugena in the late 9th century. This translation widely popularized both Pseudo-Dionysius' teaching and his explanation of the angels.
The authorship of the Dionysian Corpus was initially disputed; Severus and his party affirmed its apostolic dating, largely because it seemed to agree with their Christology. However, this dating was disputed by Hypatius of Ephesus, who met the monophysite party during the 532 meeting with Emperor Justinian I; Hypatius denied its authenticity on the grounds that none of the Fathers or Councils ever cited or referred to it. Hypatius condemned it along with the Apollinarian texts, distributed during the Nestorian controversy under the names of Pope Julius and Athanasius, which the monophysites entered as evidence supporting their position.[12]
The first defense of its authenticity is undertaken by John of Scythopolis, whose commentary, the Scholia (ca. 540), on the Dionysian Corpus constitutes the first defense of its apostolic dating, wherein he specifically argues that the work is neither Apollinarian nor a forgery, probably in response both to monophysites and Hypatius—although even he, given his unattributed citations of Plotinus in interpreting Dionysius, might have known better.[13] Dionysius' authenticity is criticized later in the century, and defended by Theodore of Raithu; and by the 7th century, it is taken as demonstrated, affirmed by both Maximus the Confessor and the 649 Lateran Council. From that point forward, the authorship is largely not in question until the Renaissance.
The Florentine humanist Lorenzo Valla (d. 1457), in his commentaries on the New Testament, did much to establish that the author of the Corpus Areopagiticum could not have been St. Paul's convert, though he was unable to identify the actual historical author. The fictitious literary persona had long been accepted on face value by all its readers, with a couple of exceptions such as Nicholas of Cusa noted by modern historians, but whose reservations went unheard.
William Grocyn pursued Valla's lines of text criticism, and Valla's critical viewpoint of the authorship of the highly influential Corpus was accepted and publicized by Erasmus from 1504 onward, for which he was criticized by Catholic theologians. In the Leipzig disputation with Martin Luther, 1519, Johann Eck used the Corpus, specifically the Angelic Hierarchy, as argument for the apostolic origin of papal supremacy, pressing the Platonist analogy, "as above, so below".
During the 19th century modernist Catholics too came generally to accept that this self-identified disciple of St. Paul must have lived after the time of Proclus, whose works he paraphrased in transforming Neoplatonism into Christian terms—which is the philosophical approach that had interested the Christian Neoplatonist Valla in the first place.
Dionysius' identity is still heavily under dispute. The compilers of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy[11] find pseudo-Dionysius to be most probably "a pupil of Proclus, perhaps of Syrian origin, who knew enough of Platonism and the Christian tradition to transform them both. Since Proclus died in 485, and since the first clear citation of Dionysius' works is by Severus of Antioch between 518 and 528, then we can place Dionysius' authorship between 485 and 518-28." Ronald Hathaway provides a table listing most of the major identifications of Dionysius: e.g., Ammonius Saccas, Dionysius the Great, Peter the Fuller, Dionysius the Scholastic, Severus of Antioch, Sergius of Reshaina, unnamed Christian followers of everyone from Origen of Alexandria to Basil of Caesarea, Eutyches to Proclus.[14] Georgian academician Shalva Nutsubidze and Belgian professor Ernest Honigmann were authors of a theory identifying pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite with Peter the Iberian.[15] A more recent identification is with Damascius, the last scholarch of the School of Athens.[16]