07 — East and West
The two great streams of the Corpus’s influence: westward, through the Latin translations — above all that of John Scotus Eriugena in the ninth century — into the immense medieval heritage of scholasticism and mysticism (Aquinas, the Victorines, the Rhineland mystics); and within the East, where the Corpus remained a foundation of Orthodox mystical and liturgical theology. This section traces both, marking the Areopagite as one of the very few authorities revered with comparable depth across the whole of Christendom.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (the Corpus Areopagiticum)
Few writings have shaped both halves of Christendom as deeply as the Corpus, and few have done so while carrying so heavy a freight of authority — for as long as the apostolic attribution held, “Dionysius” stood, in West and East alike, very nearly with the apostles. In the Latin West the translation of Eriugena opened the Corpus to the medieval schools, where it became a fixed authority of scholastic theology and the fountainhead of the apophatic mysticism that runs from the Cloud of Unknowing to Eckhart and beyond. In the East it never left the center: the Corpus underlies Byzantine liturgical commentary, hesychast spirituality, and the dogmatic synthesis of Maximus and Palamas. This section reads the two receptions in turn.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Influence on the West | The Latin translations (Hilduin, Eriugena, the later versions); the authority of “Dionysius” in scholasticism (Aquinas, Albert, Bonaventure); the apophatic mystical tradition (the Victorines, the Cloud of Unknowing, Eckhart and the Rhineland mystics); and the place of the Areopagite in Dante. |
| The Corpus in Orthodox Theology | The foundational place of the Corpus in Orthodox mystical and liturgical theology: the apophatic tradition, the theology of the liturgy and the icon, the hesychast and Palamite synthesis, and the modern Orthodox retrieval (Lossky, Meyendorff, Golitzin). |
See Also
- Maximus and the Scholia — the reception that carried the Corpus into the Byzantine tradition
- Palamas and the Essence–Energies — the hesychast synthesis built on the Corpus
- The Mystical Theology — the text that founded the apophatic tradition East and West
- The Byzantine Church — the Eastern world in which the Corpus was central
References
- Pseudo-Dionysius. The Complete Works. Trans. Colm Luibheid and Paul Rorem. New York: Paulist Press, 1987.
- Rorem, Paul. Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
- Louth, Andrew. Denys the Areopagite. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1989.