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 DEmrs

735

DENYS

his eagerness to learn induced his parents to give him a liberal education, and they sent him to a school at Saint-Trond. In 1415 he went to another school at ZwoUe (^Overijssel), which was then of great repute and attracted many students from various parts of Gennany. He there entered upon the study of philos- ophy and became acquainted with the principles and practice of religious life, which the rector, John Cele, a very holy man, himself taught. Shortly after the rector's death (1417) he returned home, having learnt all that the masters of the school could teach him. His feverish cjuest for human science and the success his uncommon intellectual powers had rapidly ob- tained seem, according to his own account, to have rather dulled his piety. Nevertheless a supernatural leaning to cloistral life, which had taken root in his mind from the early age of ten and had grown stronger during his stay at Zwolle, finally triumphed over worldly ambition and the instincts of nature, and at the age of eighteen he determined to acquire the "sci- ence of saints " in St. Bruno's order.

Ha\nng applied for admittance at the Carthusian monastery at Roermond (Dutch Limburg), he was re- fused because he had not reached the age (twenty years) required by the statutes of the order; but the prior gave him hopes that he would be received later on, and advised him to continue meanwhile his ecclesiastical studies. So he went forthwith to the then celebrated University of Cologne, where he remained three years, studjang philosophy, theology, the Holy Scriptures, etc. After taking his degree of Master of Arts, he re- turned to the monastery at Roennond and this time was admitted (142.S). In his cell Denys gave himself up heart and soul to the duties of Carthusian life, per- forming all with his characteristic earnestness and strength of will, and letting his zeal carry him even far beyond what the rule demanded. Thus, over and above the time — about eight hours — every Carthusian spends daily in hearing and saying Mass, reciting Di- vine Oifice, and in other devotional exercises, he was wont to say the whole Psalter — his favourite prayer book — or at least a great part of it, and he passed long hours in meditation and contemplation ; nor did mate- rial occupations usually hinder him from praying. Reading and writing took up the rest of his time. The list he drew up, about two years before his death, of some of the books he had read while a monk bears the names of all the principal ecclesiastical writers down to his time. He had read, he says, every summa and every chronicle, many commentaries on the Bible, and the works of a great number of Greek, and especially Arab, philosophers, and he had studied the whole of canon as well as civil law. His favourite author was Dionysius the Areopagite. His quick intellect seized the author's meaning at first reading and his wonderful memory retained without much effort all that he had once read.

It seems marvellous that, spending so much time in prayer, he should have been able to peruse so vast a number of books ; but what passes all comprehension is that he found time to write, and to write so nuich that his works might make up twenty-five folio vol- umes. No other pen, whose productions have come down to us, has been so prolific. It is true that he took not more than three hours' sleep a night, and that he was known to spend sometimes whole nights in prayer and study. There is evidence, too, that his pen was a swift one. Nevertheless the mysterj' still re- mains insolvable, and all the more so that, besides the occupations already mentioned, he had, at least for some time, others which will be presently noted, and which alone would have been enough to absorb the at- tention of any ordinarj' man. He began (14.34) by commenting the Psalms and then went on to comment the whole of the Old and the New Testament. He commented also the works of Boethius, Peter Lom- bard, John Climacus, as well as those of, or attributed

to, Dionysius the Areopagite, and translated Cassian into easier Latin. It was after seeing one of his com- mentaries that Pope Eugene IV exclaimed: "Let Mother Church rejoice to have such a son!" He wrote theological treatises, such as his " Summa Fidei OrthodoxEe", "Compendium Theologicum ", "De Lu- mine Christians Theoria;", "De Laudibus B. V. Marije", and "De Prieconio B. V. Maria-" (in both oi which treatises he upholds the doctrine of the Immac- ulate Conception), "De quatuor NovLssimis", etc. ; philosophical treatises, such as his "Compendium phil- osophicum", "De venustate mundi et pulchritudine Dei" (a most remarkable sesthetic dissertation), "De ente et essentia", etc. ; a great many treatises relating to morals, asceticism, church discipline, liturgy, etc.; sermons and homilies for all the Sundays and festivals of the year, etc. His writings, taken as a whole, show him to be a compiler rather than an original thinker; they contain more unction and piety than deep specu- lation. He was no innovator, no builder of systems, and especially no quibbler. Indeed he had a decided dislike for metaphysical subtleties of no positive use, for he was of far too practical a turn of mind to waste time in idle dialectic niceties, and sought only to do immediate good to souls and tend their spiritual needs, drawing them away from sin and guiding and urging them on in the path to heaven.

As an expounder of Scripture, he generally does no more than reproduce or recapitulate what other com- mentators had said before him. If his commentaries bring no light to modern exegetics they are at least an abundant mine of pious reflections. As a theologian and a philosopher he is a servile follower of no one master and belongs to no particular school. Although an admirer of Aristotle and Aquinas, he is neither an Aristotelian nor a Thomist in the usual sense of the W'Ords, but seems inclined rather to the Christian Pla- tonism of Dionj'sius the Areopagite, St. .Augustine, and St. Bonaventure. As a mystical writer he is akin to Hugh and Richard of St. Victor, St. Bonaventure, and the writers of the Wildesheim School, and in his treat- ises may be found summed up the doctrine of the Fathers of the Church, especially of Dionysius the Areopagite, and of Eckart, Suso, Ruysbroeck, and other writers of the German and Flemish Schools. He has been called the last of the Schoolmen, and he is so in the sense that he is the last important Scholastic writer, and that his works may be considered to fonn a vast encyclopedia, a complete sununary of the Scholastic teaching of the Middle Ages; this is their primary characterLstic and their chief merit.

His renown for learning, and especially for saintli- ness, drew upon him considerable intercourse with the outer world. He w.as consulted as an oracle by men of different social standing, from l)ishops and princes downwards; they flocked to his cell, and numberless letters came to him from all parts of the Netherlands and Germany. The topic of such correspondence was often the grievous state of the Church in Europe, i. e. the evils ensuing from relaxed morals and disci- pline and from the invasion of Islam. Deploring those evils he exerted himself to the utmost, like all pious Catholics of that day, to counteract them. For that purpose, soon after the fall of Constantinople (1453), im[)re.ssed by revelations God made to him concerning the terrific woes threatening Christendom, he wrote a letter to all the princes of Europe, urging them to amend their lives, to cease their dissensions, and to join in war against their common enemy, the Turks. A general covmcil being in his eyes the only means of procuring serious reform, he exhorted all prelates and others to unite their efforts to bring it about. He wrote also a series of treatises, lajnng down rules of Christian living for churchmen and for laymen of every rank and profession. "De doctrina et regulis vitae Christiana;", the most important of these treat- ises, was written at the request, and for the use, of the