the mystical theology of valentin weigel - DataSpace at Princeton ...

growing body of evidence suggesting that Dionysius did not have the apostolic authority
initially ascribed to him.
One fiction attracts another, it seems, as the circle of Dionysius readers discussed
in this chapter includes a rather large subpopulation of pseudonymous authors,
ghostwriters, mythical authors, and outright forgers. And although pseudonymous
authorship is by no means an uncommon practice, either ancient or modern, Dionysius is
unusual for having disappeared into his assumed identity as Paul’s disciple so completely
that his “real” name remains indiscoverable. 556 Whoever Dionysius was, he (she?) did not
choose to link his writings (or at least the portion of them that make up the Corpus
Dionysiaca) with his public identity—and neither did Weigel. Like Dionysius, Weigel in
turn attracted secretive readers: 557 at least one of his publishers used a pseudonym, and
after his death there appeared a large body of pseudo-Weigeliana. 558 While Weigel, by
writing under his real name, enforced a much less strict separation than Dionysius did
556 Many candidates for the real Dionysius have been proposed and rejected, but, for now at least, there is
no definitive answer. Valla proposed Apollinarius (2 nd century), Stiglmayr suggested the Monophysite
Severus of Antioch (6 th century), Rosemary Arthur proposed Sergius of Reshaina (6 th century), heretofore
known only as a translator of Dionysius into Syrian. Rosemary A. Arthur, Pseudo-Dionysius as Polemicist:
The Development and Purpose of the Angelic Hierarchy in Sixth Century Syria (Aldershot: Ashgate
Publishing Limited, 2008), 187; Kurt Ruh, Die mystische Gotteslehre des Dionysius Areopagita (München:
Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1987), 7-9.
557 Weigel’s secret readers and Winckelprediger (perhaps best rendered as underground or backroom
preachers) are the subject of much discussion of Weigel’s critics, who feared above all secret preaching and
hidden cults away from the supervision of more orthodox clergy. For instance, Groß’ anti-Weigel tract
takes openness and public speech to be the mark of Christian expression: “Ist die Sache Gottes, vertheidiget
er von Gott erweckte WunderMänner, suchet er der Christenheit bestes, warumb schewet er sich seinen
Nahmen zubekennen?” Secrecy, on the other hand, is a mark of Satan, “das sie im finstern mausen, inhren
Nahmen verschweigen, und alle ihr Ding heimlich treiben” (here, Groß is quoting John 3:28), who crawl
into dark corners (“zu Winckel kröche”), so that their teaching cannot be properly judged. Christian Groß,
Nothwendige, gebührliche Ehrenrettung des Evangelischen Predigampts, Wider die Newe Prophetische
Hohnsprecherey (Alten Stettin: Georg Götzken, 1644), 9. Whether this is simply a paranoid fantasy or not
is difficult to ascertain, since counting the number of secret believers is, by definition, an inexact science.
Also, some of Weigel’s works were published by a printer using a pseudonym in a fictive location. See
Winfried Zeller, “Der frühe Weigelianismus—Zur Literaturkritik der Pseudoweigeliana,” in Theologie Und
Frömmigkeit: Gesammelte Aufsätze (Marburg: N.G. Elwert Verlag Marburg, 1971), Siegfried Wollgast,
Philosophie in Deuschland 1550-1650 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993), 511-519.
558 The editor of the critical edition has worked to separate out the authentic Weigel works from the
epigraphic ones; however, these rejected works are still enormously interesting and are in need of further
examination.
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