This now remains as a point of uncertainty. It has scarcely seemed credible to some that the books of blessed Dionysius the Areopagite, so famous and apostolic a man, could have been hidden for so many centuries; and it has been suspected that they emerged so suddenly from such long-standing darkness and hidden places.
Nor is the question new, nor untouched by the defenders of Saint Dionysius, who have given quite suitable causes. The first is that of Suidas and Anastasius the Librarian, which John Saracenus proposed in these words in his letter to Odo, Abbot of Saint Dionysius:
“Because Catholics were bound by the solemn adjuration of Saint Dionysius not to reveal his writings to the unskilled multitude, but only to the learned, since they exceeded the capacity of many; and because learned men gradually failed, by the fault especially, as I think, of those who confer the prelacies of churches upon any people they please and reject learned men, they had no persons to whom they might entrust them. Perhaps Jerome also did not count the most excellent Areopagite among ecclesiastical writers because he did not think that his books, being eminent, had been appointed for common knowledge.”
Thus, then, this is the first cause: the mist and obscurity of the writing, which few could dispel and penetrate by understanding. From this arose the small number of copyists and the rarity of readers; this was followed by the sloth and neglect of those who despise things not understood, as we see happening, and as blessed Nazianzen reproached Julian the Apostate. That there were always some who knew the books will be clear from what follows. Therefore they lay hidden not from all, but from most people. This is less to be wondered at, since we know that it happened to most writers. Moreover, that solemn adjuration of Saint Dionysius is contained in On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, chapter 1, at the beginning and end; in On the Divine Names, chapter 1; and in On Mystical Theology, chapter 1.
The same Anastasius the Librarian also gives another cause, when he testifies that the opinion of the Greeks is true: that the books of Dionysius were hidden by ancient heretics through many centuries, until, through a certain Peter the Roman, as Maximus is authority, they were drawn out from the library of the Roman Church, which has always been the faithful guardian of the best exemplars, and were carried into Greece. In this way they gradually became commonly known, though previously few Greeks knew them and scarcely any Latins.
Nor is it surprising that a Greek author was made manifest to the Greeks by the Latin Church, because he who was first bishop of the Athenians and afterward of the Parisians, sent by blessed Peter into Gaul, left, where he fulfilled his martyrdom, both his body and his books; these were carried from Gaul to Rome. Authors who thought he was also bishop of the Corinthians seem to have confused him with the other Dionysius of Corinth.
Three things make this treachery of the ancient heretics most likely to me. First, because now we see Lutherans and Calvinists striving with so great an effort to snatch the same books from human hands and bury them in oblivion. Second, because I do not find these books cited by any heretics up to the times of the Monothelites, who were the first to abuse them for establishing their own error, as is clear from the Roman Council under Martin I and the Constantinopolitan Council in Trullo in the time of Emperor Constantine Pogonatus, concerning which later.
Third, because the same Anastasius writes in his preface to the Areopagite that Constantine the Philosopher, a man, as he calls him, great and a teacher of apostolic life, commended this whole codex to the memory of blessed Dionysius, and was accustomed to recommend to his hearers how much usefulness its marrow contained, and to say: “If the Saints, that is, our earlier founders, who barely and in a certain way beheaded the heretics with a club, had happened to possess Dionysius, without doubt they would have slaughtered them with a sharp sword.” By this saying he was certainly indicating that they would have more easily and more quickly made mute the mouths of those whom they silenced with greater labor and perhaps more slowly.
Michael Syncellus the Martyr also testified this concerning the Arians in his encomium of our martyr. And concerning the innovators of our own time, all who have read Dionysius and known their heresies can testify the same. Therefore those men now make so many attempts to wrest from us this divine discourse, sharper than every sword; but, as they say, it is not easy to wrench the club from Hercules.
Suidas and Pachymeres give a third cause, drawn from the ambition of the philosophers, whom Tertullian assigns as fathers to heretics. For when they had perceived the profundity and wisdom of the books of Dionysius, especially Proclus, they hid them as far as they could and used their more celebrated judgments as their own, so that they themselves might be regarded as the authors of such splendid discourses. Great Basil complains that the same thing happened to the beginning of the Gospel of Saint John.
Marsilio Ficino also laments the same concerning the books of Dionysius and other ancients in On the Christian Religion, chapter 22, writing thus: “I certainly found that the principal mysteries of Numenius, Philo, Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Proclus were received from John, Paul, Hierotheus, and Dionysius the Areopagite. For whatever magnificent things they said about the divine mind, the angels, and the other matters pertaining to theology, they plainly usurped from them.”
Thus far I have recalled the adversaries’ arguments that seemed to be of any moment, diminishing nothing, but adding what strength I could, and, as I think, have dissolved them plainly and fully. From this it is easily understood that it is not the part of a prudent or modest man, on account of such slight conjectures, together with one theologian, Cajetan, and a few men of letters, to decree vindications against the athlete of Christ on behalf of the enemies of our faith, against the Greek and Latin tradition received up to this time.