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Constructing the Apostolic Past: The Case of Dionysius the Areopagite

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Andrew Louth
Andrew Louth*
Affiliation:
Durham University
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Extract

Somewhere around the 620s, there began to appear in the Byzantine world references to works allegedly by Dionysius the Areopagite, that is, the judge of the court of the Areopagus converted by Paul the apostle according to the account in Acts 17. The corpus of works consisted of two works, on the heavenly and earthly church respectively, the Celestial Hierarchy and the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy; a treatise called the Divine Names; a short treatise called the Mystical Theology; and ten letters, addressed to various people, arranged hierarchically, from a monk called Gaius, through lesser clergy, bishops (or ‘hierarchs’) such as Polycarp and Titus, to the apostle John. Although they were initially cited by Monophysite theologians who rejected the Council of Chalcedon, there was little resistance to the acceptance of this body of texts; gradually in the course of the sixth century these works came to be regarded as genuinely belonging to the apostolic period.

Type
Part I: The Churches’ Use of the Past
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 49: The Church on its Past , 2013 , pp. 42 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2013

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References

1 For a critical edition, see Corpus Dionysiacum, 1: De divinis nominibus, ed. Beate Regina Suchla [hereafter: DN]; 2: De coelesti hierarchia, De ecclesiastica hierarchia [hereafter: EH], De mystica theologia, Epistulae [hereafter: ep.], ed. Heil, Günter and Ritter, Adolf Martin, Patristische Texte und Studien 33, 36 (Berlin, 1990-1).Google Scholar

2 For the early reception of Dionysius, see Louth, Andrew, ‘The Reception of Dionysius up to Maximus the Confessor’, in Coakley, Sarah and Stang, Charles M., eds, Re-Thinking Dionysius the Areopagite (Oxford, 2009), 43–53.Google Scholar

3 Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks 1.30 (transl. Lewis Thorpe, Penguin Classics [Harmondsworth, 1974], 87).

4 On this, see Louth, Andrew, ‘St Denys the Areopagite and the Iconoclast Controversy’, in Denys l’Aréopagite et sa postérité en orient et en occident: Actes du colloque international, Paris, 21–24 septembre 1994, ed. de Andia, Ysabel, Collections des études augustiniennes, serié antiquité 151 (Paris, 1997), 329–39 Google Scholar, esp. 336–7.

5 Already in 1969, Hathaway had listed twenty-two contenders: Hathaway, R. F., Hierarchy and the Definition of Order in the Letters of Pseudo-Dionysius (The Hague, 1969), 31–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar More recently, see the Introduction to Areopagita, Pseudo-Dionysius, Über die Mystische Theologie und Briefe, intro., transl. and notes by Ritter, A. M. (Stuttgart, 1994), 4–19 Google Scholar; Suchla, Beate Regina, Dionysius Areopagita. Leben – Werke – Wirkung (Freiburg, 2008), 24–5.Google Scholar

6 von Balthasar, Hans Urs, The Glory of the Lord. A Theological Aesthetics, 2: Studies in Theological Style: Clerical Styles (Edinburgh, 1984), 150.Google Scholar

7 Stang, Charles M., Apophasis and Pseudonymity in Dionysius the Areopagite: ‘No Longer I’ (Oxford, 2012).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Stang, Charles, ‘Dionysius, Paul and the Significance of the Pseudonym’, in Coakley, and Stang, , eds, Re-Thinking Dionysius, 11–25.Google Scholar

9 For a critical edition, see Eusebius’ Werke, 2: Die Kirchengeschichte, ed. E. Schwartz and Th. Mommsen, 3 vols, GCS 9/1–3 (Leipzig, 1903–9) [hereafter: HE].

10 This is an idea that came to me when I was writing my little introduction to Dionysius, Denys the Areopagite (London, 1989), just after editing for Penguin Classics a revised version of Eusebius’s History of the Church (Harmondsworth, 1989).

11 See Lindemann, Andreas, Die Clemensbriefe, Handbuch zum Neuen Testament 17, Die Apostolischen Väter 1 (Tübingen, 1992), 67–77 Google Scholar, esp. 76–7.

12 e.g. Sheldon-Williams, I. P., in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, ed. Armstrong, A. H. (Cambridge, 1970), 457 n. 3.Google Scholar See also Suchla, Beate, in Areopagita, Pseudo-Dionysius, Die Namen Gottes (Stuttgart, 1988), 119 Google Scholar (endnote 129).

13 Eusebius, HE 4.14-15.

14 For the apocryphal Bartholomew, see New Testament Apocrypha, ed. W. Schneemelcher and R. McL. Wilson, 2 vols (London, 1963), 1: 484–508; The Apocryphal New Testament, ed. J. K. Elliott (Oxford, 1993), 654–76.

15 Eusebius, HE 5.10.

16 Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 1.11.2; Clemens Alexandrimis, 2: Sfrontata I-VI, ed. O. Stählin, GCS 15 (Leipzig, 1906), 8–9.

17 Photius, Bibltotheca, codex 48, ed. R. Henry (Paris, 1969), 34–5.

18 Eusebius, HE 5.28.

19 Ibid. 2.25, where he quotes from Gaius about the location of the relics of the Aposdes Peter and Paul.

20 The parallels between the treatment of love in Origen’s preface to his Commentary on the Song of Songs and in Dionysius’s DN 4.11-14 are too close to be coincidental.

21 See, e.g., Mango, Cyril, Byzantium. The Empire of New Rome (London, 1994), 189–200 Google Scholar: ch. 10, ‘The Past of Mankind’.

22 Dionysius quoted from Ignatius, ad Romanos 7.2, at DN 4.12. For Michael’s correction of Hilduin, see Louth, ‘Denys and the Iconoclast Controversy’, 338.

23 Eusebius, HE 3.18.

24 The term monachos is only found in this chapter of EH, in contrast to therapeutes, which is found here and elsewhere in the Corpus Dionysiacum.

25 Dionysius, EH 6.3 (Corpus Dionysiacum, 2, ed. Heil and Ritter, 116, lines 15–19).

26 See G. W. H. Lampe, A Patristic Creek Lexicon (Oxford, 1961), 644, s.v. θεραπευτης 1.b. Lampe cites a passage (1.a) from Clement of Alexandria that seems to use the word of a contemplative (Stromata 7.24.8), which may reveal Clement’s knowledge of Philo.

27 On the meaning of the term therapeutes and the relationship of the therapeutai to the Essenes, see most recently Taylor, Joan E., Jewish Women Philosophers of First-Century Alexandria: Philo’s ‘Therapeutae’ Reconsidered (Oxford, 2003), 54–73.Google Scholar

28 Eusebius, HE 2.17.4, presumably alluding to Acts 11: 26.

29 On the therapeutai, see Schürer, E., The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, vol. 2, rev. and ed. Vermes, G., Millar, F. and Black, M. (Edinburgh, 1979), 591–7.Google Scholar

30 See Judge, E. A., ‘The Earliest Use of Monachos for “Monk” (P. Coll. Youtie 77) and the Origins of Monasticism’, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 20 (1977), 72–89.Google Scholar

31 It is possible that Dionysius took the term therapeutes directly from Philo. This seems unlikely for two reasons: first, Philo was not one of his sources for his philosophical ideas (at least, not directly: the role he ascribed to Moses does go back to Philo, but as Puech demonstrated long ago, Dionysius took it from Gregory of Nyssa: Puech, Henri-Charles, ‘La ténèbre mystique chez le Pseudo-Denys l’Aréopagite’, in idem, En quête de la gnose, 2 vols [Paris, 1978], 1: 119–41, esp. 131–2)Google Scholar; second, like Eusebius, he took the term therapeutes as referring to a Christian monk. He may, it is true, have known the pagan meaning of therapeutes as a worshipper (of God), and that may have influenced him.

32 Louth, Denys the Areopagite, 10.