Blessed Symeon Metaphrastes, most celebrated among the Greeks, whose authority the Ecumenical Council of Florence under Eugene IV uses in session 7, is abundant in commendation of these books, confirming that they belong to blessed Dionysius the Areopagite. First, he does this in the Life of Dionysius, which we have in the fifth volume of Surius, on the eleventh of October, where he also sets forth the subject matter of the books which we see in these works of ours.
Then, in the fourth volume of the same Surius, in the oration On the Dormition of the Mother of God, he says: “By a cloud he gathered together her venerable disciples, so that they might commit her venerable body to burial. But lest what has been said about the gathering of the Apostles, which took place at the Dormition of the Virgin, seem empty, it will be sufficient to add in summary those things which are said by Dionysius the Areopagite in the third book On the Divine Names to Timothy.” He uses “book” for chapter or section, and then adds the words of Dionysius which we have above in chapter 18.
I add Theodore Prodromus, who lived much later, in the times of the Emperor Andronicus the Younger. I add him because, in reviewing certain very weighty, very ancient, and very holy Greek Fathers, by whose writings the Church was illuminated, he gives the first place to our blessed Dionysius the Areopagite. After him he places the great Athanasius, Basil, both Gregories, Ephrem the Syrian, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, our Maximus, John Climacus, and Nilus. Finally, after all these whom I have named, he places Symeon Metaphrastes, as worthy of their company. Therefore let he himself now also be associated with them.