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(fifteenth century) 439 all explicitly cite Dionysius, and whether or not they agreed with him (though often they did), Dionysian ideas were seriously to be reckoned with. 440 These readers of Dionysius, however, were not inconsequential people, but rather powerful churchmen with significant influence (Cusa was a cardinal and later vicargeneral of the papal states, Eckhart was twice magister at the university in Paris and vicar to the master general of the Dominican order 441 ). And as we saw earlier in this chapter, popes, kings and emperors were the first to champion Dionysius’ writings. As Dionysius’ appearance in the Unam Sanctam bull discussed earlier suggests, perhaps it is no surprise that popes and bishops might be attracted to the works that could be interpreted (rightly or wrongly) as inscribing ecclesiastical authority into the very structure of the universe and the Divine Work itself: after all, Dionysius was the one who coined the term hierarchy. 442 Moreover, certain passages in Dionysius lend themselves quite easily to such a reading. In one of his letters, for instance, Dionysius reprimands a monk for impertinently chastising a priest (higher-ranking than a monk) who had supposedly 438 Chapter 2 of this dissertation discusses Eckhart’s theories of language and creation, which are deeply indebted to the apophatic tradition. See also Kurt Ruh, "Dionysius Areopagita im deutschen Predigtwerk Meister Eckharts," Perspektiven der Philosophie 13 (1987): 207-223; Denys Turner, Darkness, especially chapters 6 and 7 on Eckhart; Denys Turner, "Dionysius and some Late Medieval Mystical Theologians of Northern Europe," Modern Theology 24, no. 4 (October 2008): 651-665. 439 Casarella sees Cusa’s reading of Dionysius as an attempt to counter the aforementioned (note 55) affective reading of Dionysius (667). Peter Casarella, "Cusanus on Dionysius: The Turn to Speculative Theology," Modern Theology 24, no. 4 (October 2008): 668-678.Nicholas of Cusa, Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writings, trans. H. Lawrence Bond (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1997); John Monfasani, "Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite in Mid-Quattrocento Rome," in Supplementum Festivum: Studies in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller, 189-219 (Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1987). 440 The influence of Dionysius in the Middle Ages, particularly on scholastic and monastic authors, has been much more thoroughly researched than Dionysius’ influence after 1500. Jean Leclercq, "Influence and noninfluence of Dionysius in the Western Middle Ages," in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1987), 27-30.McGinn. For Eckhart and Dionysius, 441 Nicholas of Cusa, Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writings, trans. H. Lawrence Bond (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1997), 6-11. Bernard McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany (1300-1500), Vol. IV (New York: The Crossroads Publishing Company, 2005), 96-100. 442 Paul Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to their Influence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 19. 164
defiled the “sacred things” by inviting an impure penitent into the inner sanctuary. The monk’s insurgency was unjustified, writes Dionysius, because those ranking lower in the hierarchy have no authority over those above: “Even if disorder and confusion should undermine the most divine ordinances and regulations, that still gives no right, even on God’s behalf, to overturn the order which God himself has established.” 443 This sentiment is the reverse of Luther’s claim that he has the authority to rebuke the Pope himself on God’s behalf, regardless of the consequences. 444 The purpose here is not to adjudicate between these divergent interpretations, but rather to describe how Dionysius could be interpreted (and was interpreted) in a “conservative” fashion, in addition to the “radical” position that is also ascribed to him. From serving as the heavy artillery in a papal bull or in the Summa, however, Dionysius had much to lose should his pseudonymity be discovered—after all, it was his presumed proximity to the Apostles that made him an authoritative source, rather than the content of his works alone. Dionysius’ first successful debunkers were the humanists Lorenzo Valla and Desiderius Erasmus, whose commitment to philology inclined them not to take Dionysius’ claims about his identity at face value. 445 Valla pointed out that the Areopagites were not philosophers at all, but rather judges. Moreover, he queried some of the details that Dionysius had presumably added to his text to reinforce his 443 Dionysius, Letter 8, 1088C. 444 See Introduction, p. 47, n. 131. 445 Valla’s most famous feat of debunking was proving that the so-called Donation of Constantine was a fraud (1440). The Donation was said to be a document in which the Emperor Constantine, who first established Christianity as a tolerated religion in the Roman Empire, turned the control of the Church over to the Roman pope Sylvester I (4 th century). Valla established that it was in fact not written until the 9 th century. Such a document was extremely useful to those who defended the authority of the Roman Church, and Valla was even brought before the Inquisition in 1444 for his scandalous claim, rescued only by the intervention of his patron. "Valla, Lorenzo," in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Ed. F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 1689; Laurentius Valla, Laurentii Vallensis, Patritii Romani, de Falso credita & ementita Constantini donatione Declamatio, in Vol. 1, Opera Omnia (Torino: Bottega d'Erasmo, 1962), 781-795. 165
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MYSTICISM & CONFESSIONAL CONFLICT I
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ABSTRACT This dissertation investig
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INTRODUCTION • ES IST DIR NICHT B
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mostly undisturbed by his Lutheran
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yet have signalled his assent with
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in a context where action is expect
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Protestant Mysticism: Not a Contrad
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interest, 31 and praised the Theolo
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one can observe the texture of the
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discourse and reasoned debate, or t
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with fragments of Eckhart and Taule
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Dionysius and Eckhart (for differen
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movement, but also profound shifts
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schools, as well as universities wh
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allowed them to cooperate effective
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made clear, would result in dismiss
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and in these external dealings, the
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same laws of physics, but while the
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Tertullian’s De Fuga in Persecuti
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as a martyr. Moreover, Holy Scriptu
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Alternatively, the so-called four-f
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tzeyger und unterrichter ist ynn di
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fellow Lutherans in studying books
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provoked into action unnecessarily,
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masses for the dead (for instance)
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traditional proof texts about the o
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positive understandings of indiffer
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insofar as their imperfection is ra
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Of these forms of indifference, I f
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to Dionysius’ authority. Two grou
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PART I • VALENTIN WEIGEL AND MEIS
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investigating his early modern read
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was a devilish heretic to others (
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his neglect of Eckhart. 158 For ins
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“unheilvolle Kompliziertheit”).
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and Jerome (wearing what looks like
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title page, as mentioned above, des
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of a respectable though not fanatic
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himself, but rather cultivated part
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church that Luther, Melanchthon and
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kan”), and specifically the role
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soul become convinced that nothing
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that salvation can be attained thro
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more importantly, a theology that a
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Mit Recht der Meister genannt: Mode
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These role-reversal dialogues were
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As this chapter has shown, Eckhart
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philosophers from Hegel and Schopen
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CHAPTER 2 • GELASSENE GELASSENHEI
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the relationship between Tauler and
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e “as it was when it was not.”
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Eckhart agree that spiritual povert
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one-of-a-kind thing, or the best ki
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einvaltig stille), an uncreated lig
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e as free of willing and desiring a
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nestling inside the soul, but rathe
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Gelassenheit, das ist, das er nicht
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(necessarily inferior) knowledge pr
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Page 119 and 120: he begins to steer the discussion a
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Page 129 and 130: ungewisser”) and finds that his f
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Page 135 and 136: Gelassenheit for the Bible, which i
Page 137 and 138: that the kind of Gelassenheit Weige
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Page 143 and 144: Weigel gives the passage an unexpec
Page 145 and 146: Murren”)—and they do this “in
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Page 149 and 150: the strength of the intellectual re
Page 151 and 152: CHAPTER 3 • DIONYSIUS, WHOEVER HE
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Page 155 and 156: destroyer that Dionysius is most of
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Page 161 and 162: served as cornerstones in defences
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Page 167: Outside the universities, Dionysius
Page 171 and 172: other leaders of the Protestant Ref
Page 173 and 174: valorization of hierarchy per se in
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Page 179 and 180: The primary piece in the compilatio
Page 181 and 182: It is hardly surprising that Cochla
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Page 189 and 190: Dionysiacum. For Lefèvre d’Étap
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Page 193 and 194: enlightens all great thinkers in ev
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Page 197 and 198: nine distinct editions of Dionysius
Page 199 and 200: editions of Greek and Latin classic
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Page 213 and 214: Names, as the title suggests, is ba
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(“God is a rock”) or even a neg
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This is admittedly a nonsensical as
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compositions, most likely dating to
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Dionysius to show that, just as God
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efer to Greek and Hebrew, the bibli
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argues that there cannot be more th
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dicitur una.” 616 The stress that
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Weigel suggests will allow the soul
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saving sacraments by means of which
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Melanchthon’s Defence of the Augs
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alternative—namely prayer. 643 We
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Dionysius writes that the summit of
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leibet er illimitatus.” 658 Weige
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work, Weigel had written explicitly
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Luther did not ever use the exact p
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as opposed to an office-holder, an
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writing. By calling his Layman der
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Others are loyal to mere men (the P
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zuerzeigen einen rechtschaffen vnd
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and ceremonial ones at that. 694 Th
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himself returning gloriously from H
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all being. In relinquishing any cre
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improve appearances but, because it
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than resolve it, because the proble
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parcels God, who by rights is supre
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Appendix • The Works of Valentin
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Abad, J. M. (1999). Th
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Chenu O.P., M.-D. (1968). In M.-D.
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Eckhart, M. (1993). Werke I (Vol. 1
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Israel, A. (1888). M. Valentin Weig
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MacCulloch, D. (2010). Christianity
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Payne, R. J. (Ed.). (1981). Meister
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Schindling, A., & Ziegler, W. (1990
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Verkamp, B. J. (1975). The Limits u
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