600 FOURTH PEEIOD. A.D. 590-1049.
and manifold; the latter ascends from the finite and manifold to God, until it reaches that height of sublimity where it be comes completely passive, its voice is stilled, and man is united with the nameless, unspeakable, supep-essential Being of Beings. The ten Letters treat of separate theological or moral topics, and are addressed, four to Caius, a monk (frepanzbTYjs), one to Dorotheus, a deacon (hiroupf6$), one to Sosipater, a priest , one to Demophilus, a monk, one to Polycarp (called j no doubt the well-known bishop of Smyrna), one to Titus (kpdpx^j bishop of Crete), and the tenth to John, "the theologian," i. e. the Apostle John at Patmos, foretelling his future release from exile.
DIONYSIAN LEGENDS.
Two legends of the Pseudo-Dionysian writings have passed in exaggerated forms into Latin Breviaries and other books of devotion. One is his gathering with the apostles around the death-bed of the Virgin Mary.1 The other is the exclamation of Dionysius when he witnessed at Heliopolis in Egypt the miraculous solar eclipse at the time of the crucifixion :2 " Either the God of nature is suffering, or He sympathizes with a suffer ing God." 5 No such sentence occurs in the writings of Diony-
1 See above p. 592, and Hepi tieiuv ovo/zdr. cap. III. 2- (ed. of Migne, I. 682 sq.) Comp. the lengthy discussion of Baronius, Annal. ad ann. 48. In this connection St. Peter is called by Dionysius KopvQaia Kal Trpecfivrdrq TUV tieohdyuv aitpdrijc (suprema ista atque ontiquissima summitas theologorum). Corderius (see Migne 1, 686) regards this as " firmissimum argumentum pro primutu Petri et consequenter (.') Pontificum Romanorwn ejusdem successorurn."
3 Matt. 27: 45; Mark 15: 33; Luke 23: 44. See the notes in Lange, on Matthew, p. 525 (Am. ed.).
8 The exclamation is variously given : 6 ayvucros kv oapKi ^aaxei &e6c (by Syngelus); or # TO deiov rrd^cf, fj rcL Trda^ovn ovfiirhax^ (" Aut Dens patitur, aut patienti compatitur") ; or, as the Roman Breviary has it: "Aut Deus natures patitur, aut mundi machina dissolvitur," " Either the God of nature is suffering, or the fabric of the world is breaking up." See Corderius in his annotations to Ep. VII., in Migne, I. 1083, and Halloix, in Vita S, Dion., ibid. II. 698. The exclamation of Dionysius is sometimes (even by so accurate a scholar as Dr. Westcott, I. c., p. 8) erroneously traced to the 7th Ep. of Dion., as a response to the exclamation of Apollophanes.
2 138. IGNORANCE IN THE WESTERN CHURCH. G01
sius as his owii utterance ; but a similar one is attributed by him to the sophist Apollophanes, his fellow-student at Heliopolis.1
The Roman Breviary has given solemn sanction, for devo tional purposes, to several historical errors connected with Dionysius the Areopagite: 1) his identity with the French St. Denis of the third century ; 2) his authorship of the books upon " The Names of God," upon " The Orders in Heaven and in the Church/' upon "The Mystic Theology," and "divers others/' which cannot have been written before the end of the fifth century; 3) his witness of the supernatural eclipse at the time of the crucifixion, and his exclamation just referred to, which he himself ascribes to Apollophanes. The Breviary also relates that Dionysius was sent by Pope Clement of Home to Gaul with Rusticus, a priest, and Eleutherius, a deacon ; that he was tortured with fire upon a grating, and beheaded with an axe on the 9th day of October in Domitian's reign, being over a hundred years old, but that "after his head was cut off, he took it in his hands and walked two hundred paces, carrying it all the while ! " 2
§ 138. Prevailing Ignorance in the Western Church.
The ancient Roman civilization began to decline soon after the reign of the Antonines, and was overthrown at last by the Northern barbarians. The treasures of literature and art were buried, and a dark night settled over Europe. The few scho lars felt isolated and sad. Gregory of Tours (540-594) com plains, in the Preface to his Church History of the Franks,
1 In Ep. VII. 2, where Dionysius asks Polycarp to silence the objections of Apollophanes to Christianity and to remind him of that incident when he exclaimed: ravra, « xa/e Atnvvcie, $e/«i' auo(/3al Trpayp.anjv^ " Istcp, o prceclare Dionysi, divinarum sunt vicissitudines reritm.'' The same incident is alluded to in the spurious eleventh letter addressed to Apollophanes himself. So Suidas also gives the exclamation of Apollophanes, sub verbo Atov.
J Brcv. Rom. fur Oct. 9, in the English ed. of the Marquess of Bute, vol. II. 1311. Even Alban Butler, in his Lives of the Saints (Oct. 9), rejects the fable of the identity of the two Dionysii.