The Oxford Handbook of Dionysius the Areopagite is a welcome addition to Pseudo-Dionysian studies. While handbooks exist devoted to individual Neoplatonists such as Maximus Confessor (The Oxford Handbook of Maximus Confessor; Oxford, 2017) and Proclus (All from One: A Guide to Proclus; Oxford, 2016) as well as Neoplatonism (The Routledge Handbook of Neoplatonism; Routledge, 2017), and Christian Neoplatonism (Christianity and Neoplatonism; Oxford, 2023), a singular treatment of Pseudo-Dionysius by numerous experts has not been attempted until now. The articles in this volume collectively provide a comprehensive view of Dionysian thought in the East, West, as well as the reception of Dionysius in the Reformation and post-Reformation eras. The editors have ensured that the articles are uniform with respect to audience and purpose – while some handbooks have a mixture of scientific and introductory articles, the articles in the handbook are detailed introductory articles on their proposed topic. Thus, this approach makes the volume primarily useful for orienting scholars in the field of late antique philosophy or Christian philosophy for whom Pseudo-Dionysius and all of his vagaries are unknown. Moreover, the writing in this volume is accessible (i.e., jargon-free) to undergraduates and early graduate students; it will be extremely useful as secondary reading in university lecture classes and small colloquia.
The forty articles are divided into four sections (The Corpus in its Historical Setting; Dionysius in the East; Dionysius in the West; Dionysius after the Western European Reformation) that cohere well among each other – the four sections, collectively, cover the issues one would want from a handbook on Pseudo-Dionysius. Individual articles, in addition, pertain to the purported topic of their sections; there are no outliers that do not appear at home in their sections. The approach is systematic and uniform – again, this is another editorial accomplishment given the number of scholars involved in the project. Section one treats the Dionysian corpus in its historical setting. This chapter includes an excellent article by the scholar Beate Regina Suchla, one of the editors of the scholarly edition of Dionysius's Divine Names (Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 1990). This article treats the history of critical editions of the corpus. The article presents hypotheses on the supposed author of the corpus: Peter the Iberian, Severus of Antioch, and Sergius of Reshaina; Suchla provides arguments for why each of these proposals should be dismissed. Suchla does not provide her own suggestion for authorship, but instead urges readers to wait for further evidence before drawing conclusions. In what is possibly the most helpful section of the article, Suchla lays out the history of the manuscript tradition. She treats a difficult topic in a way that is orderly and visually appealing; her presentation of data is clear and understandable. This article has an analogue in Section II: Dionyius in the East in István Perczel's “Notes on the Earliest Greco-Syriac Reception of the Dionysian Corpus.” This article is particularly useful because the Syriac tradition is a stumbling-block to scholars who know Greek but cannot access Syriac. After treating the history of Sergius of Reshaina's Syriac translation, Perczel illustrates the difference in Sergius's Syriac translation with that of a Greek text on DN I.4. After comparing the two translations in divided columns, he provides the Greek text of Thedosius of Alexandria with the Syriac translation of Phocas. Perczel provides English translations of these texts to make his analysis accessible to students; here, he shows the evolution of translation in the Syriac tradition.
In addition to articles pertaining to translation and historical details of the corpus, the volume is replete with discussions of Dionysius's theology – this includes his thought placed in the context of Neoplatonism (chapter 10, “God in Dionysius and the Later Neoplatonists” by Mark Edwards and John Dillon), as well as the earliest Greek reception of Dionysius by Maximus Confessor (chapter 14, “Maximus the Confessor and the Reception of Dionysius the Areopagite” by Maximos Constas) and a host of other theologians who serve as inheritors of the Dionysian tradition (Niketas Stethatos, Gregory Palamas, and Pletho). In section 3, Dionysius in the West, Wayne Hankey's article, “Dionysius in Albertus Magnus and His Student Thomas Aquinas” provides the basic essentials of Dionysius in Scholastic thought. Hankey approaches Aquinas's Platonism as an amalgamation of several traditions, examining the Peripatetic and Procline influences, in particular. Andrew Louth's article on the medieval English tradition (“Dionysius's Reception in the English-speaking World” in section IV: Dionysius After the Western European Reformation) is charmingly well written making it a pleasure to read; its focus lies on the mystical tradition of Dionysius both in treatises and in poetry (especially Donne).
The volume lacks a global index, but the bibliographies for each chapter appear complete. Editors and copy editors worked carefully on this large volume. It is a model for handbooks.
