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

and so did not dwell on the fact that hierarchy and unity for Dionysius are
complementary rather than opposed concepts. Weigel, on the other hand, concluded that,
precisely because the universe was hierarchically constituted, there was no need for a
separate earthly ecclesiastical hierarchy.
In what follows, I will first lay out some of the key principles of Dionysius’
thinking in more detail, focusing in particular on the relationship between his theory of
language and his ecclesiology, in order to then make clear how Weigel absorbs and
transforms these ideas in his writings. I will then trace the three phases of Weigel’s
reception of Dionysius’s writings. The first is Weigel’s initial contact with Dionysius’s
ideas, documented in one of Weigel’s earliest pieces of writing, De vita beata from 1570.
Here, Weigel argues that, because the universe is hierarchically structured, then all things
must participate in God. The means of salvation are therefore always at hand, and can be
approached by turning inward, away from the multiplicity of the created world to the One.
The second phase occurs in a slightly later work, Ein Schön Gebett Büechlein,
Welches die Einfelttigen berichttett (from 1575), where Weigel uses a Dionysian
understanding of hierarchy to demonstrate how this inward turn can be accomplished,
namely via prayer, by which Weigel actually means practicing a form apophasis. In doing
so, Weigel makes the main functions of the Church irrelevant—administering the
sacraments, preaching sermons, interpreting the Bible, and doing theology—envisaging a
world where laypeople are perfectly able to serve God and achieve salvation on their own,
without the assistance of ordained clerics.
In the final phase, Weigel pushes this Dionysian apophasis even further in his
most explicitly anti-confessional work. In the Dialogus de Christianismo from 1584 (his
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