The genesis and first circulation of the Corpus Dionysiacum are mysterious, and attempts to resolve these questions on the basis of internal criticism remain unsatisfactory. In this Round Table we will focus on the sub-corpus of letters. It is indeed in his letters that the author of the Corpus gives potentially most substance to his main character, Dionysius the Areopagite. The original criteria of composition and destination of the letters still largely remain to be clarified. Our method will consist of studying the reception of this sub-corpus, especially through its commentaries and paratexts, in Byzantium and beyond, in the oldest preserved Greek witnesses and in the most ancient translations, in Syriac, Armenian and Latin. This multilingual approach, oriented to ancient readings of the text, should allow us to better understand the origins of this sub-corpus in a way that is less biased by modern interpretations.
Within the Corpus Dionysiacum, Epistles III-IV are those most directly devoted to Christology. In this contribution, we will examine their reception in the Greek, Syriac and Latin contexts. After the oldest quotation from Ep. IV in Severus of Antioch, we will consider the early Scholia by John of Scythopolis (first half of the 6th century),…
This paper offers a partial and preliminary analysis of George Pachymeres’ paraphrase on the Greek Corpus Dionysiacum, with particular attention to the Letters. The investigation originates from a previous study of selected sections of the commentary on Letters VII and X, conducted on a limited and targeted sample of Greek manuscripts. Many of these transmit…
The presence of Dionysius the Areopagite at the Dormition of the Virgin Mary was one of the very few facts known about the Areopagite’s life in the Middle Ages. It is based on a cryptic mention in Dionysius’ De divinis nominibus, which gave rise to a very long list of literature since the sixth century….
The dissemination of Arabic translations of texts attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite is primarily due to the popularity of the collections in which they are found. These collections include, on the one hand, synaxaria, lives of the saints, and collections of homilies read on specific Church occasions; and on the other hand, canon law or…