592 FOURTH PEKIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
teric wisdom of the gospel, and the mysterious harmony between faith and reason and between the celestial and terrestrial hier archy.
Pseudo-Dionysius is a philosophical counterpart of Pseudo- Isidor : both are pious frauds in the interest of the catholic sys tem, the one with regard to theology, the other with regard to church polity ; both reflect the uncritical character of mediaeval Christianity ; both derived from the belief in their antiquity a fictitious importance far beyond their intrinsic merits. Doubts were entertained of the genuineness of the Areopagitica by Laurentius Valla, Erasmus, and Cardinal Cajetan ; but it was only in the seventeenth century that the illusion of the identity of Pseudo-Dionysius with the apostolic convert and the patronsaint of France was finally dispelled by the torch of historical criticism. Since that time his writings have lost their authority and attraction; but they will always occupy a prominent place among the curiosities of literature, and among the most remark able systems of mystic philosophy.
AUTHORSHIP.
Who is the real author of those productions? The writer is called simply Dionysius, and only once.1 He repeatedly mentions an unknown Hierotheos, as his teacher; but he praises also "the divine Paul," as the spiritual guide of both, and ad dresses persons who bear apostolic names, as Timothy, Titus, Caius, Polycarp, and St. John. He refers to a visit he made with Hierotheos, and with James, the brother of the Lord (ddsA- ^6$£oc), and Peter, "the chief and noblest head of the inspired apostles," to gaze upon the (dead) body of her (Mary) who was "the beginning of life and the recipient of God;" on which occasion Hierotheos gave utterance to their feelings in ecstatic hymns. It is evident then that he either lived in the apostolic age and its surroundings, or that he transferred himself back in
1 In Ep. VII. 3, where Agollophanes addresses him: "O Dionysius."
I 137. THE PSEUDO-DIONYSIAN WRITINGS. 593
imagination to that age.1 The former alternative is impossible. The inflated style, the reference to later persons (as Ignatius of Antioch and Clement of Alexandria), the acquaintance with Neo-Platonic ideas, the appeal to the "old tradition" (apyaia xafjddofftz) of the church as well as the Scriptures, and the elaborate system of church polity and ritual which he presup poses, clearly prove his post-apostolic origin. He was not known to Eusebius or Jerome or any ecclesiastical author be fore 533. In that year his writings were first mentioned in a conference between orthodox bishops and heretical Severians at Constantinople under Justinian I.2 The Severians quoted them as an authority for their Monophysitic Christology and against the Council of Chalcedon; and in reply to the objection that they were unknown, they asserted that Cyril of Alexandria had used them against the Nestorians. If this be so, they must have existed before 444, when Cyril died ; but no trace can be found in CyriPs writings. On the other hand, Dionysius pre supposes the christological controversies of the fifth century, and shows a leaning to Monophysitic views, and a familiarity with the last and best representatives of Xeo-Platonism, especially with Proclus, who died in Athens, A. D. 485. The resem blance is so strong that the admirers of Dionysius charged Proclus with plagiarism.3 The writer then was a Christian Neo-Platonist who wrote towards the close of the fifth or the beginning of the sixth century in Greece or in Egypt, and who by a literary fiction clothed his religious speculations with the name and authority of the first Christian bishop of Athens/
1 Hipler and Bohmer assume that those names do not refer to the well-known apostolic characters, hut this is untenable.
2 See the Collatio Catholicontm cum Sererianis in Mansi, VIII. 817 sqq., and an account of the conference in Walch's Ketzcrgexchichte, VII 134 sqq.
3 We^tcott asserts (p. 6) that the coincidences with Damnscius, the second in succession from Proclus, and the last Platonic teacher at Athens, are even more remarkable. He was of Syrian origin.
* Different conjectures as to the author, time and place of composition : 1) A pseudonymous Dionysius (of Egypt) at the end of the fifth century. Gieseler,