Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite

The author known as Pseudo-Dionysius wrote under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite, the Athenian converted by Paul according to the Acts of the Apostles. His real identity is unknown. The works are first attested in the early sixth century, and since the late nineteenth century scholars have shown that they depend closely on Proclus, so that they were most likely written in Syria in the late fifth or early sixth century.

The corpus consists of four treatises, The Divine Names, The Mystical Theology, The Celestial Hierarchy and The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, and ten letters. Its authority as the work of a disciple of Paul gave it immense influence: it was translated into Latin in the ninth century by John Scotus Eriugena, commented on by Thomas Aquinas, and read by nearly every later mystical writer, East and West.

Although the attribution was doubted in the Renaissance and abandoned in modern scholarship, the works remain foundational for Christian apophatic theology and for the very word “hierarchy”, which the author appears to have coined.

In the East the corpus was defended and annotated in the sixth century by John of Scythopolis, and interpreted in the seventh by Maximus the Confessor, which secured its place in Orthodox theology. In the West, after Eriugena, it was studied by the Victorines, Bonaventure and Aquinas, and its threefold way of purification, illumination and union became the standard map of the spiritual life.