594 FOtJBTH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
In the same way the pseudo- Clementine writings were assigned to the first bishop of Rome.
THE FORTUNES OF PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS.
Pseudo-Dionysius appears first in the interest of the heretical doctrine of one nature and one will in the person of Christ.1 But he soon commended himself even more to orthodox theolo gians. He was commented on by Johannes Scythopolitanus in the sixth century, and by St. Maximus Confessor in the seventh. John of Damascus often quotes him as high authority. Even Photius, who as a critic doubted the genuineness, numbers him among the great church teachers and praises his depth of thought.3
In the West the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius were first noticed about 590 by Pope Gregory I., who probably became acquainted with them while ambassador at Constantinople. Pope Hadrian I. mentions them in a letter to Charlemagne.
Engelhardt, Dorner, and others. 2) Dionysius of Alexandria, d. 265. Baratier. 3) Another Dionysius of the fourth century. 4) During the Eutychian and Nestorian controversies. Le Nourry. 5) A Pseudo-Dionysius of the third century, who wished to introduce the Eleusynian mysteries into the church. Baumgarten Crusius. 6) Apollinaris the elder, d. 360. 7) Apollinaris the younger, d. 370. Laurentius Valla. 8) Synesius of Ptolemais, c. 410. La Ooze. 9) Peter Gnapheus or Fullo, patriarch of Constantinople. Le Quien. 10) A writer in Edessa, or under the influence of the Edessene school, between 480 and 520. Westcott.— See the Prolegomena of Le Nourry, De Kubeis, Corderius, in the first vol. of Migne's ed., and Lnpton, I. c.
1 The Monothelites appealed to a passage in Ep. IV. ad Caium. See Hefele, III. 127 sq. Dorner (II. 196 sqq.) correctly represents the mystic Christology of Pseudo-Dionysius as a connecting link between Monophysitism and the orthodox dogma.
a The first book which he notices in his "Bibliotheca" (about 845) is a de fense of the genuineness of the Dionysian writings by a presbyter Theodorus, who mentions four objections: 1) they were unknown to the earlier fathers; 2) they are not mentioned in the catalogues of writings by Eusebius; 3) they are filled with comments on church traditions which grew by degrees long after the apostolic age; 4) they quote an epistle of Ignatius, written on his way to martyrdom under Trajan. Photius seems to think that the objections are stronger than the answers of Theodorus. See Neander, III. 170; Westcott, I c., p. 4 and Hergenrother, Photius, III. 29 and 331.
§ 137. THE PSEUDO-DIONYSIAN WHITINGS. 595
The Emperor Michael II. the Stammerer, sent a copy to Louis the Pious, 827. Their arrival at St. Denis on the eve of the feast of the saiut who reposed there, was followed by no less than nineteen miraculous cures in the neighborhood. They naturally recalled the memory of the patron-saint of France, and were traced to his authorship. The emperor instructed Hilduin, the abbot of St. Denis, to translate them into Latin ; but his scholarship was not equal to the task. John Scotus Erigena, the best Greek scholar in the West, at the re quest of Charles the Bald, prepared a literal translation with comments, about 850, and praised the author as "venerable alike for his antiquity and for the sublimity of the heavenly mysteries" with which he dealt.1 Pope Nicolas I. complained that the work had not been sent to him for approval, "accord ing to the custom of the church" (861); but a few years later Anastasius, the papal librarian, highly commended it (c. 865).
The Areopagitica stimulated an intuitive and speculative bent of mind, and became an important factor in the development of scholastic and mystic theology. Hugo of St. Victor, Peter the Lombard, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Robert Grosseteste, and Dionysius Garth usianus wrote commentaries on them, and drew from them inspiration for their own writings.2 The Platonists of the Italian renaissance likewise were influenced by them.
Dante places Dionysius among the theologians in the heaven of the sun :
"Thou seest next the lustre of that taper, Which in the flesh below looked most within The angelic nature and its ministry."3
1 Other Latin versions were made afterwards by Johannes Sarracinus in the twelfth century, by Ambro^ius Camaldulensis in the fifteenth, by Corderius in the seventeenth.
2 St. Thomas, the "Angelic Doctor," is so full of quotations from Dionysius that Corderius says, he drew from him "totamfere dodrinam theologicam." See Migne I. 96.
8 Paradiso, X. 115.