Pseudo-Dionysius

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (or Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite) was a Greek author, Christian theologian and Neoplatonic philosopher of the late 5th to early 6th century, who wrote a set of works known as the ''Corpus Areopagiticum'' or ''Corpus Dionysiacum''.

The author pseudepigraphically identifies himself in the corpus as "Dionysios", portraying himself as Dionysius the Areopagite, the Athenian convert of Paul the Apostle mentioned in Acts 17:34.

Historic confusions

In the early sixth century, a series of writings of a mystical nature, employing Neoplatonic language to elucidate Christian theological and mystical ideas, was ascribed to the Areopagite. They have long been recognized as pseudepigrapha, and their author is now called "Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite".

Corpus

Works

The Corpus is today composed of:
* ''Divine Names'' (');
* '' Celestial Hierarchy'' ('')'';
* ''Ecclesiastical Hierarchy'' (');
* ''Mystical Theology'' ('), "a brief but powerful work that deals with negative or apophatic theology and in which theology becomes explicitly “mystical” for the first time in history;"
* Ten epistles.

Seven other works are mentioned repeatedly by pseudo-Dionysius in his surviving works, and are presumed either to be lost or to be fictional works mentioned by the Areopagite as a literary device to give the impression to his sixth-century readers of engaging with the surviving fragments of a much larger first-century corpus of writings. These seven other works are:
* ''Theological Outlines'' ('),
* ''Symbolic Theology'' ('),
* ''On Angelic Properties and Orders'' ('),
* ''On the Just and Divine Judgement'' ('),
* ''On the Soul'' ('),
* ''On Intelligible and Sensible Beings,''
* ''On the Divine Hymns''.

Dating

In attempts to identify a date ''after'' which the corpus must have been composed, a number of features have been identified in Dionysius' writing, though the latter two are subject to scholarly debate.
* Firstly, and fairly certainly, it is clear that Dionysius adopted many of his ideas—including at times passages almost word for word—from Proclus, who died in 485, thus providing at the least a late fifth-century early limit to the dating of Dionysius.
* In the ''Ecclesiastical Hierarchy'' Dionysius twice seems to allude to the recitation of the Creed in the course of the liturgy (''EH'' 3.2 and 3.III.7). It is often asserted that Peter the Fuller first mandated the inclusion of the Nicene Creed in the liturgy in 476, thus providing an earliest date for the composition of the Corpus. Bernard Capelle argues that it is far more likely that Timothy, patriarch of Constantinople, was responsible for this liturgical innovation, around 515 — thus suggesting a later date for the Corpus.Paul Rorem and John C. Lamoreaux, ''John of Scythopolis and the Dionysian Corpus: Annotating the Areopagite'', (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), p. 9. The point was first proposed by Stiglmayr.
* It is often suggested that because Dionysius seems to eschew divisive Christological language, he was probably writing after the '' Henoticon'' of Zeno was in effect, sometime after 482. It is also possible that Dionysius eschewed traditional Christological formulae in order to preserve an overall apostolic ambience for his works, rather than because of the influence of the ''Henoticon''. Also, given that the ''Henoticon'' was rescinded in 518, if Dionysius was writing after this date, he may have been untroubled by this policy.
In terms of the latest date for the composition of the ''Corpus'', the earliest datable reference to Dionysius' writing comes in 528, the year in which the treatise of Severus of Antioch entitled ''Adversus apologiam Juliani'' was translated into Syriac — though it is possible the treatise may originally have been composed up to nine years earlier.

Another widely cited latest date for Dionysius' writing comes in 532, when, in a report on a colloquy held between two groups (orthodox and monophysite) debating the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon, Severus of Antioch and his monophysite supporters cited Dionysius' Fourth Letter in defence of their view. It is possible that pseudo-Dionysius was himself a member of this group, though debate continues over whether his writings do in fact reveal a monophysite understanding of Christ. It seems likely that the writer was located in Syria, as revealed, for example, by the accounts of the sacramental rites he gives in ''The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy'', which seem only to bear resemblance to Syriac rites.

Authorship

The author pseudonymously identifies himself in the corpus as "Dionysios", portraying himself as the figure of Dionysius the Areopagite, the Athenian convert of Paul the Apostle mentioned in Acts 17:34.

Various legends existed surrounding the figure of Dionysius, who became emblematic of the spread of the gospel to the Greek world. A tradition quickly arose that he became the first bishop of Cyprus or of Milan, or that he was the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews; according to Eusebius, he was also said to be the first bishop of Athens. It is therefore not surprising that that author of these works would have chosen to adopt the name of this otherwise briefly mentioned figure.

The authorship of the Dionysian Corpus was initially disputed; Severus and his party affirmed its apostolic dating, largely because it seemed to agree with their Christology. This dating was disputed by Hypatius of Ephesus, who met the monophysite party during the 532 meeting with Emperor Justinian I; Hypatius denied its authenticity on the ground that none of the Fathers or Councils ever cited or referred to it. Hypatius condemned it along with the Apollinarian texts, distributed during the Nestorian controversy under the names of Pope Julius and Athanasius, which the monophysites entered as evidence supporting their position.

The first defense of its authenticity is undertaken by John of Scythopolis, whose commentary, the ''Scholia'' (ca. 540), on the Dionysian Corpus constitutes the first defense of its apostolic dating, wherein he specifically argues that the work is neither Apollinarian nor a forgery, probably in response both to monophysites and Hypatius—although even he, given his unattributed citations of Plotinus in interpreting Dionysius, might have known better. Dionysius' authenticity is criticized later in the century, and defended by Theodore of Raithu; and by the 7th century, it is taken as demonstrated, affirmed by both Maximus the Confessor and the Lateran Council of 649. From that point until the Renaissance, the authorship was less questioned, though Thomas Aquinas, Peter Abelard and Nicholas of Cusa expressed suspicions about its authenticity; their concerns were generally ignored.W. Franke, ed., ''On What Cannot Be Said'', (2007), vol. 1, p. 158.

The Florentine humanist Lorenzo Valla (d. 1457), in his 1457 commentaries on the New Testament, did much to establish that the author of the ''Corpus Areopagiticum'' could not have been St. Paul's convert, though he was unable to identify the actual historical author. William Grocyn pursued Valla's lines of textual criticism, and Valla's critical viewpoint of the authorship of the highly influential ''Corpus'' was accepted and publicized by Erasmus from 1504 onward, for which he was criticized by Catholic theologians. In the Leipzig disputation with Martin Luther, in 1519, Johann Eck used the ''Corpus'', specifically the ''Angelic Hierarchy'', as argument for the apostolic origin of papal supremacy, pressing the Platonist analogy, "as above, so below".

During the 19th century modernist Catholics too came generally to accept that the author must have lived after the time of Proclus. The author became known as 'Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite' only after the philological work of J. Stiglmayr and H. Koch, whose papers, published independently in 1895, demonstrated the thoroughgoing dependence of the ''Corpus'' upon Proclus. Both showed that Dionysius had used, in his treatise on evil in Chapter 4 of ''The Divine Names'', the ''De malorum subsistentia'' of Proclus.

Dionysius' identity is still disputed. Corrigan and Harrington find Pseudo-Dionysius to be most probably
Ronald Hathaway provides a table listing most of the major identifications of Dionysius: e.g., Ammonius Saccas, Pope Dionysius of Alexandria, Peter the Fuller, Dionysius the Scholastic, Severus of Antioch, Sergius of Reshaina, unnamed Christian followers of everyone from Origen to Basil of Caesarea, Eutyches

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