Annotation CCXXIX

”Among whom was also Dionysius the Areopagite.” — Acts 17:34

Who Dionysius the Areopagite was.

Bede, in the commentaries on Acts, explaining this, hands down that this Dionysius was that bishop of the Corinthians who wrote notable volumes for the utility of the Church. But Eusebius, in the 6th book of the Ecclesiastical History, plainly shows that the Dionysius who was bishop of Corinth (who wrote many [things]) was another [person]. And there he also cites the authority of this Dionysius, bishop of Corinth; who, in a certain epistle which he wrote

to the Athenians, showed that Dionysius the Areopagite, converted by Paul, was the first bishop of Athens, [and] instituted by the same Apostle. Moreover, [there is] a constant report that this Dionysius the Areopagite is the same who, at Lutetia of the Parisians [Paris], crowned with martyrdom, fell asleep. Whose also are thought to be the books which are now had On the Hierarchies and On the Divine Names — concerning which Thomas Cajetan, and very many others, doubt whether they are his by whose title they are inscribed, on this account, that Jerome, in the book On Illustrious Men, made no mention of this Dionysius. But concerning these [things] it has been said in this work, in the second book, under “Dionysius.”