From these writers also Bude argued, thinking that Saint Jerome, in book 2 Against Jovinian, received the sequence of the angelic orders from our Dionysius in these words: “Why in the kingdom of heaven are there archangels, angels, thrones, dominions, powers, Cherubim, and Seraphim, and every name that is named, not only in the present age but also in the future? The diversity of names is not without cause where there is no diversity of merits. An archangel is certainly an archangel of other lesser angels; and powers and dominions have other beings over whom they exercise power and over whom they rule.”
If you say that Jerome borrowed this from Paul himself, as to the names I shall readily assent, but not as to that subordination which he added, and on account of which he subjoins: “This is in the heavens; this is in the mystery of God, lest you mock and jeer at us in your usual manner if we posit emperors, prefects, counts, tribunes, centurions, companies, and the rest of the order of military service.” I do not think he looked anywhere else than to the things handed down and most richly explained by blessed Dionysius throughout the whole book On the Celestial Hierarchy, especially chapter 6.
Saint Gregory the Theologian, in his book On Easter, wrote to this effect: “And so indeed the Holy of Holies, which are covered by Seraphim and glorified by three sanctifications, which come together into one dominion and deity; as some other one of the elders has also philosophized most beautifully and most sublimely.” Who is this? Not Isaiah, for he would not call him “some other one of the elders.” Nicetas, in his annotations, took it of blessed Athanasius; but Gregory seems hardly likely to have called Athanasius, only just dead, in this way.
Bude’s opinion is more likely, wishing blessed Dionysius the Areopagite to be signified, since he is deservedly so called and philosophized most beautifully and most sublimely about these matters in the Celestial Hierarchy, chapter 7, pages 44 and 45. Certainly the best and most learned man Billius Prunaeus, Abbot of Saint Michael, in book 1 of Sacred Observations, chapter 23, held that Gregory Nazianzen was not merely an assiduous reader but also a studious imitator of our Dionysius. I believe, Scaliger, that you will concede to him some taste of Greek letters.
Certainly on account of the sublimity of these writings, blessed Chrysostom, in the last book of his sermons, as Anastasius the Librarian cites him in his letter to King Charles, called our Dionysius “the bird of heaven,” because, lifted by the favorable breeze of divine grace, with a wing not afraid to be loosed, he raised himself above the Cherubim and Seraphim all the way to the throne of divinity.