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 DIONYSIUS

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DIONYSIUS

his citations from Hierotheus. It may be asked if these are not fictions pure and simple, designed to strengthen the belief in the genuineness of the actually- published works. This suspicion seems to be more warranted because of other discrepancies, e. g. when Dionysius, the priest, in his letter to Timothy, extols the latter as a ffeoeiSrit, evffeos, Sehi Updpxv^. and nevertheless seeks to instruct him in those sublime secret doctrines that are for bishops only (E. H., i, 5 in P. G., Ill, 377 A), doctrines, moreover, which, since the cessation of the DLsciplina Arcani, had already been made public. Again, Dionysius points out (D. D. X.,_iii, 2 in P. G., Ill, 681 B; cf. E. H.. iv, 2 in P. G., Ill, 476 B) that his writings are intended to serve as catechetical instruction for the newly-baptized. This Ls evidently another contradiction of his above-men- tioned statement.

We may now turn to the historj' of the Pseudo- Dionj'sian writings. This embraces a period of almost fifteen hundred years, and three distinct turning points in its course have divided it into as many dis- tinct periods: first, the period of the gradual rise and settlement of the writings in Christian literature, dat- ing from the latter part of the fifth centurj- to the Lateran Council, 649; second, the period of their highest and universally acknowledged authority, both in the Western and in the East em Church, lasting till the beginning of the fifteenth ccntur}-; third, the period of sharp conflict waged about their authenticity, begun by Laurentius Valla, and closing only within recent years. The Areopagitica were formerly supposed to have made their first appearance, or rather to have been first noticed by Christian writers, in a few pseudo-epigraph- ical works which have now been proved to be the products of a much later period; as, for instance, in the following: Pseudo-Origenes, " Homilia in diversos secunda"; Pseudo-Athanasius, "Quaestiones ad An- tiochum ducem", Q. viii; Pseudo-Hippolj-tus, against the heretic Beron; P.seudo-Chrysostom, ''Sermo de pseudo-prophetis". I'ntil quite recently more credit was given to other lines of evidence on which Franz Hipler endeavoured to support his entirely new thesis, to the effect that the author of the writmgs lived about the year 375 in Egj'pt, as Abbot of Rhinokonira. Hipler's attempts, however, at removing the textual difficulties, fK\ci\pis, a5e\(p6$eos, cCiim, proved to be unsuccessful. In fact, those very passages in which Hipler thought that the Fathers had made use of the Areopagite (e. g. in Gregorj- of Xazianzus and Jerome) do not tell in favour of his hj'pothesLs; on the contrary, they are much better explained if the con\erse be as- sumed, namely, that Pseudo-Dionysius drew from them. Hipler himself, convinced by the results of recent research, has abandoned this opinon. Other events also, both historical and literarj', evidently ex- erted a marked influence on the .Areopagite: (1) the Council of Chalcedon (451), the Christological termi- nology of which was studiously followed by Dionysius; (2) tlie writings of the neo-Platonist Proclus (411- 485), from whom Dionysius borrowed to a surprising extent; (3) the introduction (c. 476) of the Credo into the liturgy of the Mass, which is alluded to in the "Ecclesiastical Hierarchy" [iii, 2, in P. G., Ill, 425 C, and iii, (3), 7 in P. G., Ill", 436 C; cf. the explanation of Maximus in P. G., IV, 144 B]; (4) the Henotieon of the Emperor Zeno (482), a formula of union designed for the bishops, clerics, monks, and faithful of the Orient, as a compromise between Monophysitism and orthodoxj'. Both in spirit and tendency the .\reopa- gitica correspond fully to the sense of the Henotieon; and one might easily infer that they not only originated in the same .sphere, but that they were made to further the puipose of the Henotieon.

The result of the foregoing data is that the first ap- pearance of the pseudo-epigraphical writings cannot be placed earlier than the latter half, in fact at the close, of the fifth century.

Having ascertained a terminus post quern, it is pos- sible by means of evidence taken from Dionysius him- self to fix a terminus ante quern, thus narrowing to about thirty years the period within which these writings must have originated. The earliest reliable citations from the writings of Dionysius are from the end of the fifth and the beginning of the sixth centun,'. The first is by Severus, the head of a party of moderate Monophysites named after him, and Patriarch of .A.n- tioch (512-518). In a letter addressed to a certain abbot, John (Mai, Script, vett. nov. coll., VII, i, 71). he quotes in proof of his doctrine of the fiia (rinffcros ipiaii in Chri.st the Dionysian Ep. iv (P. G., Ill, 1072 C), where a Kaivr) BeavopucT) ivip-yeia is mentioned. Again, in the treatise "Adversus anathem. Juliani Halicam." (Cod. S\t. Vat. 140, fol. 100 b), Severus cites a passage from" D. D. N., ii, 9, P. G., Ill, 648 A (dXXd Kal rb Triirris — BeaixS) SieTrXaTTero), and returns once more to Ep. iv. In the .Syrian '' History of the Church"of Zacharias (ed. Ahrens-Kriiger, 134-5') it is related that Severus, a man well-versed in the writings of Dionysius (Areop.), was present at the Synod in Tyre (513). Andreas, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappa- docia, wrote (about 520) a commentary on the .\poc- alj-pse wherein he quotes the Areopagite four times and makes use of at least three of his works (Migne, P. G., CVI, 257, 305. 356, 780; cf. Diekamp in " Hist. Jahrb.", XVIII, 1897, pp. 1-36). Like Severus, Zacharias Rhetor and, in all probability, also Andreas of Cappadocia, inclined to Monophysitism (Diekamp, ibid., pp. 33, 34). It must be mentioned here that a "Book of Hierotheus" — Hierotheus had come to be regarded as the teacher of Dionysius — existed in the Syrian literature of that time and exerted consider- able influence in the spread of Dionysian doctrines. Frothingham (Stephen Bar Sudaili, p. 63 sq.) considers the pantheist Stephen Bar Sudaili as its author. Job- ius Monachus, a contemporary of the writers just men- tioned, published against Severus a polemical treatise which has since been lost, but claims the Areopagite as authority for the orthodox teaching (P. G., CHI, 765). So also Ephraem, .\rchbishop of Antioch (527-545), interprets in a right sense the well-known pa.ssage from D. D. X., i, 4, P. G., Ill, 529 A: o airXovs ' lr,aoOi cvveriSri, by distinguishing between crivderos inroaTadu and (rivderoi oiala. Between the years 532-548, if not earlier, John of Scj-thopolis in Palestine wrote an in- terpretation of Dionysius (Pitra, " Analect. saer.", IV, Proleg., p. xxiii; cf. Loofs, "Leontius of Byzantium", p. 270 sqq.) from an anti-Severian standpoint. In Leontius of Byzantium (48.5-543) we have another important witness. This eminent champion of Catho- lic doctrine in at least four passages of his works builds on the piyoL^ Aiowaioi (P. G., LXXXVI, 1213 A; 1288 C; 1304 D; Canisius-Basnage, "Thesaur. monum. eccles.", Antwerp, 1725, I, 571). Sergius of Resaina in Mesopotamia, archiater and presbyter (d. 536), at an early date translated the works of Diony- sius into Syriac. He admitted their genuineness, and for their defence also translated into Syriac the already current "Apologies" (Brit. Mus. cod. add. 1251 and 22370; cf. Zacharias Rhetor in Ahrens-Kriiger, p. 208). He himself was a Monophysite.

By far the most important document in the case is the report given by Bishop Innocent of Maronia of the religious debate held at Constantinople in 533 between seven orthodox and seven Severian speakers (Har- douin, II, 1159 sqq.). The former had as leader and spokesman Hypatius, Bishop of Ephesus, who was thoroughly versed in the literature of the subject. On the second day the "Orientals" (Severians) alleged against the Council of Chalcedon, that it had by a novel and erroneous expression decreed two natures in Christ. Besides Cyril of Alexandria, Athanasius, Gregory Thaumaturgus, and Felix and Julius of Rome, they also quoted Dionysius the Areopagite as an ex- ponent of the doctrine of one nature. Hypatius re-