Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/278

 le Débonnaire, son of Charlemagne. The abbey of St. Denys, near Paris, was thought the most fitting receptacle for such a treasure; and its abbat, the superstitious and unprincipled Hilduin, compiled a collection of Areopagitica in honour of the event. This work professes to be based on documents then extant, but is described in equally unfavourable terms by Sirmond and by Cave. In the next reign, that of Charles the Bald, a Latin trans. of all the Dionysian writings was made by the great scholar Joannes Erigena. It is first publicly mentioned by pope Nicholas I., in a letter to Charles in 861, and is warmly praised by Anastasius Bibliothecarius in 865.

(2) The Dionysian writings consist of four extant treatises: On the Heavenly Hierarchy; On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy; On the Names of God; On Mystic Theology; after which come ten letters or fragments of letters.

This list, from one point of view, is complete as an exposition of the Dionysian system, and is also in its proper order. For we may take as its epitome the words of St. Paul with which the first sentence in the volume concludes: "For of Him and to Him are all things" (Rom. xi. 36). God, the centre towards which all tend, and at the same time the all-embracing circumference within which all are included; the constant streaming forth from Him, like rays from the visible sun, of divine influences whereby men are purified, illumined, and drawn upwards to Himself; man's powerlessness to know the real nature and being of God, while yet he may be drawn near to Him, in the mystic communion of a loving faith: such is, very briefly, the burden of the Dionysian strain. And if we take the de Divinis Nominibus as the central portion of the writings, and recognize the two Hierarchies as one consecutive whole, we have enough to fill up the outline sketched above. In the Celestial and Ecclesiastical Hierarchies, with their ninefold orders of heavenly and of earthly ministrations; we have the means, the machinery (so to speak), whereby God communicates Himself to man. In the Divina Nomina we have disclosed to us, so far as can be seen through veils and shadows, the Fountain-head of all light and being, the object of all thought and desire. In the Mystic Theology we have the converse of the path marked out in the Hierarchies, the ascent of the human soul to mystic union with God. The three great sections of the Dionysian writings thus answer very strikingly to the three elements of which he makes his hierarchy to consist: τάξις, ἐπιστήμη, and ἐνέργεια πρὸς τὸ θεοειδὲς ἀφοιουμένη (Eccl. Hier. iii. § 1).

Yet the author refers to a series of treatises, still more numerous than the preceding, as if he thought them necessary for the completion of his design. These are: On Divine Hymns; Symbolic Theology; On the Objects of Intellect and Sense; Theological Outlines; On the Soul; On the Just Judgment of God. To these are added by Sixtus Senensis and others: On the Properties and Orders of Angels; The Legal Hierarchy.

The question of these missing treatises is most perplexing. Did they ever exist? If so, what has become of them? Are they mere inventions of the author, designed to parry attacks on his own weak points, and to suggest the filling up of deficiencies which in reality he left unsupplied? This last seems very probable. But, if true, while our respect for the intellectual completeness of the author's mind is increased, our opinion of his moral straightforwardness must be diminished. However, he is certainly entitled to the credit of his conception of such a theological system, whether all the parts be duly filled in or not.

Limits of space do not here allow a minute analysis of the extant works. The Heavenly Hierarchy opens with what sounds almost like the keynote of the whole, the text πᾶσα δόσις ἀγαθή, κ.τ.λ. of Jas. i. 17. The language, in which the simple words of these Apostles are expanded and paraphrased, will convey no bad idea of the generally turgid style. To bring us to Himself, God graciously makes use of signs and symbols, and of intervening orders of ministers, by whose means we may be gradually raised to nearer communion with Him. Such an organization he calls a Hierarchy—"a sacred order, and science, and activity, assimilated as far as possible to the godlike, and elevated to the imitation of God proportionately to the Divine illuminations conceded to it " (Cel. Hier. iii. § 1, tr. by Westcott). The members of the Heavenly Hierarchy are the nine orders of Angels—the term Angel being sometimes used alike of all the orders, and sometimes, in a more proper and restricted sense, of the lowest of the nine. The names of the nine orders appear to be obtained by combining with the more obvious Seraphim, Cherubim, Archangels, and Angels, five deduced from two passages of St. Paul, Eph. i. 21 and Col. i. 16. In each of these passages four names are mentioned, of which three (ἄρχαι, ἐξουσίαι, κυριότητες) are common to both, while one is peculiar to each, δυνάμεις to the former, θρόνοι to the latter. The nine are subdivided into triads, ranged thus in descending order:

1. Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones.

2. Dominations, Virtues, Powers.

3. Principalities, Archangels, Angels.

The long and important treatise On the Names of God (Περὶ θείων ὀνομάτων) has been shewn by Stiglmayr and Koch to contain an extract from Proclus's treatise de Malorum Substitentia; which has reached us in a Latin trans. It is an inquiry into the being and attributes of God as indicated by the Divine Names in Holy Scripture. These Names, like all outward channels of spiritual knowledge, can reveal His real nature but very imperfectly; and even so, not without prayer, which, like the golden chain of Homer, lifts us up to Heaven while we seem to be drawing it down to earth; or like the rope thrown out to mariners from a rock, which enables them to draw their ship nearer to the rock, while they pull as if they would draw the rock to them (Div. Nom. iii. § 1). The first thing thus revealed is God's goodness, the far-reaching effulgence of His being, which streams forth upon all, like the rays of the sun (ib. iv. § 1). Evil is nothing real and positive, but a defect, a negation only: Στέρησις ἄρα ἐστὶ τὸ κακόν, καὶ ἔλλειψις, καὶ ἀσυένεια, καὶ ἀσυμμετρία, κ.τ.λ. (ib. iv. § 32). As what we