Thomas de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan, a theologian of great name and an illustrious ornament of the Dominican family, did not equal in his commentaries on Sacred Scripture the praise he had deservedly gained in scholastic commentary. Therefore Cano, in book 7 of On Theological Places, placed this judgment upon him: Cajetan could have been equal to the greatest builders of the Church, had he not defiled his teaching with certain errors, as though by the admixture of a kind of leprosy, and, either affected by a passion for curiosity or certainly trusting in the dexterity of his talent, expounded the Sacred Letters at last according to his own judgment. He did so almost always most happily, but in a few places more acutely, to be sure, than happily. For he was not tenacious enough of ancient tradition, and not sufficiently versed in the reading of the Saints; nor did he wish to learn the mysteries of the sealed book from those who opened them not by their own sense, but by the tradition of the elders, that is, by the true key of the word of God. Thus, although he had written many things excellently, at the end he overturned everything, and by certain new expositions of Scripture either weakened, or at least diminished, the authority of other things which he had said with the greatest weight.
Among these errors of Cajetan this one is not undeservedly to be counted: when, on Acts chapter 17, he believed, as he often does, one Erasmus rather than Saint Thomas, Albert the Great, Saint Bonaventure, Alexander of Hales, and the rest of the scholastic doctors. Certainly among Catholics, that is, among true theologians, I remember reading no one who preceded Cajetan in this denial. Therefore, although, as Cano says, I do it unwillingly, to criticize so learned a man even by express name, nevertheless, lest the celebrity of his name and glory be thrown at us here by the Lutherans, I thought his rashness had to be noted.
Sixtus of Siena, in book 2 of the Sacred Library, writes that most learned men had answered Cajetan’s conjectures, brought forward by others long before him, very fully; and therefore it seemed superfluous to him to unweave the same web again. I have resolved to solve all the objections of the adversaries. Cajetan, then, judges that Dionysius the Areopagite left behind absolutely none of the writings that we have.
His conjectures are two. The first is that Saint Jerome, in the book On Illustrious Men, does not mention these Areopagitic writings. I answer that Saint Jerome omitted certain other ecclesiastical writers as well, either because they escaped his diligence, or because one man could not obtain or know all, or always remember all. If Saint Jerome did know them, as it seemed to Budaeus, and as is likely, he omitted them because he had decided to list only those whom Eusebius, older than himself, had listed, and the Areopagite had been passed over by Eusebius. Cardinal Baronius gathers this intention of Jerome from Saint Jerome’s letter to Dexter, which is the preface to that work.
If this writer had been later than Eusebius, Jerome would have named him. Eusebius mentions the person of the Areopagite, but he does not mention the writings. Why he does not mention the writings I shall say in its own place, namely chapter 7.
Cajetan’s later conjecture is that Gregory the Great, in the homily on the lost drachma, did not dare to assign these books to blessed Dionysius, and speaks only ambiguously, using the word “it is reported.” I answer that he speaks so not because he himself doubted, since he had read the books in Greece, but because he speaks in the manner of Sacred Scripture, which in certain matters, accommodating itself to the mind of others, not rarely uses ambiguous words, saying “perhaps,” “maybe,” “whether,” and the like.
Moreover, he shows clearly enough that he inclines more to the affirmative opinion, since he confirmed his own teaching from this book. He said “it is reported” because he was addressing Latins, to whom the authority of books not yet given to Latium was not yet sufficiently known or ascertained.
There was still another argument of Erasmus, in his notes on Jerome: from the fact that there were various Dionysiuses among the Greeks, it becomes likely that these books belong to another than the Areopagite. Although this pleased Caelius Rhodiginus so much that he repeated it in almost the same syllables in book 2 of Ancient Readings, chapter 3, nevertheless it collapses sufficiently of itself. For among the Greeks there were several Athanasiuses, several Basils, several Gregories. Does it therefore become likely that the works today ascribed to the Alexandrian, the Great, and the Nazianzen were another’s rather than theirs?
I am weary of refuting trifles of this sort, more truly trifles than arguments; such are the remaining arguments of the more recent men, Gaza, Valla, Luther, and others.