Long ago certain more ancient men attacked the Dionysian writings. Since even their names do not survive, it is no empty suspicion that they were bolder than they were weighty, and heretics rather than Catholics. When they saw that they could no longer suppress the writings of our Dionysius, which at first they had attempted, they began to weaken the authority of the books.
A certain presbyter Theodore, a learned man, had carefully collected their objections, four in number, and had more carefully dissolved each one, as Photius taught in the Library. If Photius had recalled the solutions as he recalled the objections, he would have lightened this burden for me now. Since Theodore’s book has perished, I shall act briefly in this chapter.
The first argument of those Greeks was this: How, if these are true works of Dionysius the Areopagite, did not some of the later Fathers mention his golden sayings which are found in them? I answer that this question is empty and illiterate. For many Greek Fathers did mention them, such as the other Dionysius, Origen, the two Anastasii, Athanasius, and the rest whom I shall cite. Nor, even if no one had mentioned them, would more than a light suspicion arise from this.
How many books have lain hidden for many centuries, which afterward came forth into the light? Have not the letters of Saint Boniface, Apostle and Martyr of Germany, now been as it were born through the diligence of Nicolas Serarius? We knew William the Little of Newburgh; who knew that he had composed such honeyed commentaries on the Song of Songs until, from our Louvain library, I inserted them into my Mystical Chain? I say nothing of blessed Orientius. How many books, previously unknown and buried for so many years in ignorance, have Henry Canisius, our Turrianus, our Pontanus, and our Fronto restored to their ancient authors?
Then they argued in this way: Eusebius Pamphili, weaving a catalogue of the principal holy Fathers who had been famous in writings up to that time, makes no mention of this Dionysius, just as Origen Adamantius, prior to Eusebius, does not. I answer that this too, a negative argument, has only the force of a very slight conjecture.
Blessed Maximus the Martyr answers that many writers were omitted by Eusebius, and that Eusebius himself admits that innumerable books had not come to him. One fact teaches this sufficiently: since he mentions so few, and passed over even writers very well known in his own Palestine, such as Hymenaeus and Narcissus, presbyters of Jerusalem, and Pantaenus the martyr, teacher of Clement of the Stromata; and of Clement of Rome he mentions only two letters.
Yet I think this omission belonged rather to malice than to ignorance. For Eusebius, as Saint Jerome testifies, was the standard-bearer of the Arians, under which name the Sixth General Synod also accuses him. Therefore he was hostile to our Dionysius, who in chapter 2 of On the Divine Names smothered the Arians, not yet born, by his writings, as though in their mother’s womb. The same Eusebius attributes to Dionysius of Alexandria only the works in which he seems to play the prelude to the Arians, as I shall teach later. Certainly he wrapped in silence the very famous writer Theognostus, from whose quiver blessed Athanasius more than once drew arrows against the Arians. Read Baronius in the notes to the Roman Martyrology, October 9.
Concerning Origen, Maximus rightly judges that nothing is to be wondered at, because he celebrated the memory of scarcely four ecclesiastical writers. From confidence in his own talent he was less assiduous in turning over the writings of others. Although perhaps Adamantius was not wholly unmindful of our Dionysius, if the passages that will afterward be proposed are his.
Third, they contend that it can in no way happen that a work is the Areopagite’s in which the traditions and rites of the Church, even the smallest, are recounted with exactness in the same manner in which the Church now uses them. For it is agreed that these things were perfected little by little and introduced into the Church when it was already flourishing and established. But Dionysius lived almost in the very cradle of the Church. Therefore the inscription of the name must be judged improbable and badly fabricated.
This argument tastes of the saliva of heretics attempting to strip all antiquity from ecclesiastical rites. But I answer them: there are two kinds of ecclesiastical rites. Some belong to the administration of the sacraments and the chief necessities of the Church; others belong to the adornment of the Church, without which the things pertaining to the salvation of Christians could have been procured, though less decorously.
Those traditions and ceremonies of the former kind took their origin already from the beginning of the Church and the times of the Apostles, some instituted by Christ himself, some by the Apostles as the anointing of the Holy Spirit taught them. Only of the rites of the latter kind is it true, as the argument assumes, that they were introduced gradually when the Church was at last flourishing, though they are nevertheless to be kept holily.
But the ceremonies and traditions which our Dionysius mentions must be said to belong to the former kind, and therefore to have already been received in his age. It would be a heavy labor, and not now necessary, to summon and recall each one. It will suffice for me to have denied that any rites are contained in these works more recent than Hadrian’s empire. It will be yours, O Scaliger, and that of your herd, to select these rites and show when each was born after this time, and by whom each was prescribed to the Church.
Meanwhile Catholics may read the recapitulation of apostolic traditions collected by Genebrard in volume 2 of his Chronography, at the end of the first century; and they will see, from Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp, Martial, the disciples of the Apostles, and the book of the Shepherd, that the ceremonies Dionysius sets down were in use in that first century.
The fourth argument was this: How could Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, disciple of Paul, have remembered the words of blessed Ignatius in his Letter to the Romans, which Ignatius wrote in the year of his martyrdom under Trajan, at which time that Dionysius had already died?
This argument assumes that Dionysius died before Ignatius. Although many have wished this, it is far more probable and more consonant with reason that Dionysius reached the second year of Hadrian’s empire, as is handed down in Bede, Ado, and the rest of the ancient martyrologies, whose consensus the Church has always regarded most highly. Thus that letter of blessed Ignatius could have been cited by him.
But then a new difficulty arises, not so much from the long life of Dionysius, for in the same century Saints Simeon, Polycarp, and Hermas extended life equally or more, as because the words of Saint Dionysius now under discussion come from On the Divine Names, chapter 4, page 306: “The divine Ignatius also writes, ‘My love has been crucified.’” But that book On the Divine Names is dedicated to blessed Timothy, Bishop of Ephesus, who, it is agreed, was crowned with martyrdom before blessed Ignatius.
This matter has tormented many. For the most illustrious founder of the Annals thinks either that this Timothy was another than that famous Ephesian bishop, disciple of Paul, and that the title was added by copyists, since it was not added to the inscription of the book On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, where he also calls this Timothy “son”; or, if he is the same Timothy of Ephesus, that the book was first sent while Ignatius was still alive, and afterward, after the death of Ignatius, the quotation was added by Dionysius, as writers have often been accustomed to do.
That the Timothy in both books is the same is proved from the beginning of the later book. I would rather believe that “Bishop of Ephesus” dropped out of the inscription of the book On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy than that it was wrongly added to the inscription of the book On the Divine Names. For George Pachymeres recognizes it and teaches, in his paraphrase of On the Divine Names, that the same Timothy was beloved to Paul. And lest anyone be disturbed because he is called “son” by Dionysius, he expressly notes that this happened both because Timothy was younger in age and because this was the custom of writers, that whoever wrote to another wrote as teacher to disciple.
Thus Timothy was Dionysius’s fellow disciple and also his disciple, just as Hierotheus was Dionysius’s teacher and fellow disciple, as in On the Divine Names, chapter 3. But did Dionysius afterward insert this saying of Ignatius into his books? Although that could have happened, I do not see that it is necessary to say so.
Blessed Maximus explains “he writes” as “he was accustomed to write,” and notes that Dionysius therefore did not say “he writes to the Romans,” but simply and absolutely “he writes.” He could have done this in some other book or letter which has perished. Blessed Martyr Ignatius also could, burning with love of Jesus, have been accustomed to use that phrase by mouth and pen as a sort of motto, since he bore the name of Jesus fixed in his heart. So the other Ignatius, our patriarch, used the phrase “for the greater glory of God.” And thus this difficulty seems to me abundantly satisfied, certainly for those who do not love to pull the rope of contention.