Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/108

 90 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. product of its time, and suited to the tastes of the coming mediaeval centuries; suited to their mystic fancies, and suited to their need of concrete super- human beings who, closer at hand than God and the homoousian Christ, should aid men in their combats with each other and with the besetting swarms of devils.^ IV. Mysteries, SymboUsnij and Allegorical Interpretation The word " mystery " has had many meanings. It has always meant something hidden, beyond common knowledge or even human capacity for knowing. But the hidden " mysteries '' might differ greatly ; and there might be a difference in the mode of conceiving 1 The Areopagite becomes a power in the Western Middle Ages after the translation of his works by Erigena and the definite form given to his legend in the Vita Dionysii by Hilduin, abbot of St. Denis in the time of Louis the Pious. This Vita identifies the Areopagite with St. Denis, a fact unquestioned until Abelard. See also Mystere des actes des Apotres, Didron's Annales Arch^olo- giques, XIII and XIV. The Areopagite frequently appears in medi- aeval art ; his decapitation is rendered in the tympanum of the north portal of the Abbey of St. Denis ; he appears in the Spanish Chapel of St. Maria Novella in Florence. In the Louvre there is a paint- ing of the last communion and martyrdom of St. Denis, of the latter part of the fourteenth century. W. Preger, Geschichte der deutschen Mystik im Mittelalter, Vol. I, pp. 283-291, speaks of mys- tical teachings in the German tongue, and gives a German rhymed poem of the thirteenth century containing doctrines of the Areop- agite. For his influence on Meister Eckhart, see Preger, op. cit., under " Eckhart." Also in Hildebrand, Didaktik aus der Zeit der Kreuzzuge (Deutsche National Literatur), pp. 38-49. For Dante's debt to Dionysius see Edmund Gardner, Dante's Ten Heavens, also article " Dionisio " in Toynbee's Dante Dictionary.