as far as possible to the godlike and elevated to the imitation of God in proportion to the divine illuminations conceded to it.” There are two hierarchies, one in heaven, and one on earth, each with three triadic degrees.

The celestial or supermundane hierarchy consists of angelic beings in three orders: 1) thrones, cherubim, and seraphim, in the immediate presence of God; 2) powers, mights, and dominions; 3) angels (in the narrower sense), archangels, and principalities. The first order is illuminated, purified and perfected by God, the second order by the first, the third by the second.

The earthly or ecclesiastical hierarchy is a reflex of the heavenly, and a school to train us up to the closest possible communion with God. Its orders form the lower steps of the heavenly ladder which reaches in its summit to the throne of God. It requires sensible symbols or sacraments, which, like the parables of our Lord, serve the double purpose of revealing the truth to the holy and hiding it from the profane. The first and highest triad of the ecclesiastical hierarchy are the sacraments of baptism which is called illumination (cárioμa), the eucharist (ouva, gathering, communion), which is the most 1 Or, in the descending order, they are:

(α) σεραφία, χερουβίμ, θρόνοι.

(6) κυριότητες, δυνάμεις, ἐξουσίαι.

(ε) αρχαί, ἀρχάγγελοι, ἄγγελοι.

Five of these orders are derived from St. Paul, Eph. 1: 21 (ápxý, ¿§ovaía, δύναμις, κυριότης), and Col. 1 : 16 (θρόνοι, κυριότητες, ἀρχαί, ἐξουσίαι); the other four (σεραφίμ, χερουβίμ, ἀρχάγγελοι, άγγελοι) are likewise biblical designations of angelic beings, but nowhere mentioned in this order. Thomas Aquinas, in his doctrine of angels, closely follows Dionysius, quoting him literally, or more frequently interpreting his meaning. Dante introduced the three celestial triads into his Divina Commedia (Paradiso, Canto XXVIII. 97 sqq.):

"These orders upward all of them are gazing,
And downward so prevail, that unto God

They all attracted are and all attract.

And Dionysius with so great desire

To contemplate these orders set himself,

He named them and distinguished them as I do."

(Longfellow's translation.)

sacred of consecrations, and the holy unction or chrism which represents our perfecting. Three other sacraments are mentioned: the ordination of priests, the consecration of monks, and the rites of burial, especially the anointing of the dead. The three orders of the ministry form the second triad.' The third triad consists of monks, the holy laity, and the catechu

mens.

These two hierarchies with their nine-fold orders of heavenly and earthly ministrations are, so to speak, the machinery of God's government and of his self-communication to man. They express the divine law of subordination and mutual dependence of the different ranks of beings.

The Divine Names or attributes, which are the subject of a long treatise, disclose to us through veils and shadows the fountain-head of all life and light, thought and desire. The goodness, the beauty, and the loveliness of God shine forth upon all created things, like the rays of the sun, and attract all to Himself. How then can evil exist? Evil is nothing real and positive, but only a negation, a defect. Cold is the absence of heat, darkness is the absence of light; so is evil the absence of goodness. But how then can God punish evil? For the answer to this question the author refers to another treatise which is lost.2

The Mystic Theology briefly shows the way by which the human soul ascends to mystic union with God as previously set forth under the Divine Names. The soul now rises above signs and symbols, above earthly conceptions and definitions to the pure knowledge and intuition of God.

Dionysius distinguishes between cataphatic or affirmative theology, and apophatic or negative theology. The former descends from the infinite God, as the unity of all names, to the finite

They are not called bishop, priest, and deacon, but iepápxns, lepeús, and λειτουργός. Yet Dionysius writes to Timothy as πρεσβύτερος τῷ συμπρεσβυτέρῳ. 2 Περὶ δικαίου καὶ θείου δικαιωτηρίου.

8 καταφατικός, αfirmative, from καταφάσκω (κατάφημα), to afirm.

4 ἀποφατικός, negative, from ἀποφάσκω (ἀπόφημι), to deny.

and manifold; the latter ascends from the finite and manifold to God, until it reaches that height of sublimity where it becomes completely passive, its voice is stilled, and man is united with the nameless, unspeakable, super-essential Being of Beings.

The ten Letters treat of separate theological or moral topics, and are addressed, four to Caius, a monk (depaлεúτη), one to Dorotheus, a deacon (etrovprós), one to Sosipater, a priest (spec), one to Demophilus, a monk, one to Polycarp (called lepáp, no doubt the well-known bishop of Smyrna), one to Titus (spápzy, bishop of Crete), and the tenth to John, “the theologian," i. e. the Apostle John at Patmos, foretelling his future release from exile.

DIONYSIAN LEGENDS.

Two legends of the Pseudo-Dionysian writings have passed in exaggerated forms into Latin Breviaries and other books of devotion. One is his gathering with the apostles around the death-bed of the Virgin Mary. The other is the exclamation of Dionysius when he witnessed at Heliopolis in Egypt the miraculous solar eclipse at the time of the crucifixion: "Either the God of nature is suffering, or He sympathizes with a suffering God." No such sentence occurs in the writings of Diony

1 See above p. 592, and Hepì veiwv óvoμár. cap. III. 2. (ed. of Migne, I. 682 sq.) Comp. the lengthy discussion of Baronius, Annal. ad ann. 48. In this connection St. Peter is called by Dionysius κορυφαία καὶ πρεσβυτάτη τῶν θεολόγων ȧкpóτns (suprema ista atque antiquissima summitas theologorum). Corderius (see Migne 1, 686) regards this as "firmissimum argumentum pro primatu Petri et consequenter (?) Pontificum Romanorum ejusdem successorum."

2 Matt. 27: 45; Mark 15: 33; Luke 23: 44. See the notes in Lange, on Matthew, p. 525 (Am. ed.).

* The exclamation is variously given: ὁ ἄγνωστος ἐν σαρκὶ πάσχει Θεός (by Syngelus); or ἢ τὸ θεῖον πάσχει, ἢ τῷ πάσχοντι συμπάσχει (“ Aut Deus patitur, aut patienti compatitur"); or, as the Roman Breviary has it: "Aut Deus naturæ patitur, aut mundi machina dissolvitur," "Either the God of nature is suffering, or the fabric of the world is breaking up." See Corderius in his annotations to Ep. VII., in Migne, I. 1083, and Halloix, in Vita S. Dion., ibid. II. 698. The exclamation of Dionysius is sometimes (even by so accurate a scholar as Dr. Westcott, l. c., p. 8) erroneously traced to the 7th Ep. of Dion., as a response to the exclamation of Apollophanes.

sius as his own utterance; but a similar one is attributed by him to the sophist Apollophanes, his fellow-student at Heliopolis.'

The Roman Breviary has given solemn sanction, for devotional purposes, to several historical errors connected with Dionysius the Areopagite: 1) his identity with the French St. Denis of the third century; 2) his authorship of the books upon "The Names of God," upon "The Orders in Heaven and in the Church," upon "The Mystic Theology," and "divers others," which cannot have been written before the end of the fifth century; 3) his witness of the supernatural eclipse at the time of the crucifixion, and his exclamation just referred to, which he himself ascribes to Apollophanes. The Breviary also relates that Dionysius was sent by Pope Clement of Rome to Gaul with Rusticus, a priest, and Eleutherius, a deacon; that he was tortured with fire upon a grating, and beheaded with an axe on the 9th day of October in Domitian's reign, being over a hundred years old, but that "after his head was cut off, he took it in his hands and walked two hundred paces, carrying it all the while!""

§ 138. Prevailing Ignorance in the Western Church.

The ancient Roman civilization began to decline soon after the reign of the Antonines, and was overthrown at last by the Northern barbarians. The treasures of literature and art were buried, and a dark night settled over Europe. The few scholars felt isolated and sad. Gregory of Tours (540-594) complains, in the Preface to his Church History of the Franks,

1 In Ep. VII. 2, where Dionysius asks Polycarp to silence the objections of Apollophanes to Christianity and to remind him of that incident when he exclaimed: ταῦτα, ὦ καλὲ Διονύσιε, θείων ἀμοιβαὶ πραγμάτων, " Istæ, ο praclare Dionysi, divinarum sunt vicissitudines rerum." The same incident is alluded to in the spurious eleventh letter addressed to Apollophanes himself. So Suidas also gives the exclamation of Apollophanes, sub verbo Atov.

Brev. Rom. for Oct. 9, in the English ed. of the Marquess of Bute, vol. II. 1311. Even Alban Butler, in his Lives of the Saints (Oct. 9), rejects the fable of the identity of the two Dionysii.

that the study of letters had nearly perished from Gaul, and that no man could be found who was able to commit to writing the events of the times.'

"Middle Ages" and "Dark Ages" have become synonymous terms. The tenth century is emphatically called the iron age, or the sæculum obscurum. The seventh and eighth were no better.3 Corruption of morals went hand in hand with ignorance. It is reported that when the papacy had sunk to the lowest depth of degradation, there was scarcely a person in Rome who knew the first elements of letters. We hear complaints of priests who did not know even the Lord's Prayer and the Creed. If we judge by the number of works, the seventh, eighth and tenth centuries were the least productive; the ninth was the most productive; there was a slight increase of productiveness in the eleventh over the tenth, a much greater one in the twelfth, but again a decline in the thirteenth century.*

' In Migne's ed., Tom. LXXIX. 159.

" According to the terminology of Cave and others, the 7th century is called Seculum Monotheleticum; the eighth, S. Eiconoclasticum; the ninth, S. Photianum; the eleventh, S. Hildebrandinum; the twelfth, S. Waldense; the thirteenth, S. Scholasticum; the fourteenth, S. Wicklevianum; the fifteenth, S. Synodale; the sixteenth, S. Reformationis. All one-sided or wrong except the last. Historical periods do not run parallel with centuries.

'Hallam (Lit. of Europe, etc., ch. 1, 10) puts the seventh and eighth cen turies far beneath the tenth as to illumination in France, and quotes Meiners who makes the same assertion in regard to Germany. Guizot dates French civilization from the tenth century; but it began rather with Charlemagne in the eighth.

In Migne's Patrologia Latina the number of volumes which contain the works of Latin writers, is as follows:

Writers of the seventh century, Tom. 80-88.

8 vols.

None of these centuries comes up to the Nicene and post-Nicene ages. Migne gives to Augustine alone 12, and to Jerome 11 volumes, and both of