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Dionysius’ very first Greek reader, John of Scythopolis, is said to have introduced
“significant changes” that cleansed Dionysius’ writings from the taint of Origenism
(considered a fearsome heresy in the early Church). 409 An alternate branch of the Corpus’
textual transmission (in Syrian rather than in Greek), by contrast, has not been tampered
with, and so can serve as a point of access to a “more faithful, if indirect, witness to that
original text” that is “replete with Origenistic influences.” 410 Moreover, it has been
suggested that Dionysius might even have welcomed the veils that his earliest readers
drew across his work, proposing that the Corpus Dionysiacum was never intended for a
general audience, “but rather [was] produced for a select, esoteric audience of
Origenists.” 411 On this account, John of Scythopolis did not misinterpret Dionysius so
much as transform an esoteric text into an exoteric one. Perhaps this new theory about the
ambiguity that presides over Dionysius’ very early reception history can serve as a model
for his subsequent reception, which also oscillates between radical and conservative.
So far the discussion has focused on those for whom Dionysius is radical and
heterodox. Against this strand of scholarship that claims Dionysius for heterodoxy are
those who think that there is something inherently conservative about Dionysius’ thought.
Steven Ozment, for instance, writes that “Dionysian mysticism, with its strong sense of
established hierarchy, could be enlisted to promote a very conservative ‘descending’ view
of political authority.” 412 Setting aside the question of whether an idea can be inherently
conservative or radical regardless of context or deployment, Dionysius’ texts have indeed
409 István Perczel, "The Earliest Syriac Reception of Dionysius," Modern Theology 24, no. 4 (October
2008): 571.
410 Ibid, 557-558.
411 Ibid, 565.
412 Steven E. Ozment, Mysticism and Dissent: Religious Ideology and Social Protest in the Sixteenth
Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), n. 25, 12.
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