A Thirteenth-century Textbook of Mystical Theology at the University of Paris: The Mystical Theology of Dionysius the Areopagite and Excerpts from Eriugena’s Peryphision

The great men of letters of late thirteenth-century Europe took a good deal of interest in the mysterious fifth-century author known as Dionysius the Areopagite. They typically read Dionysius not in the original Greek, prepared sometime in the middle of the thirteenth-century. This edition, which appeared first in Paris and later circulated all over Western Europe, was no mere translation. In addition to the famous translation made by Eriugena in the ninth-century, it contained translations of scholia on the Dionysian texts made by Anastasius the Librarian, alternative readings provided by Anastasius and other Latin readers, as well as excerpts from Eriugena’s own theological masterwork, the Periphyseon. University scholars such as Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas thus learned Dionysian mystical theology not only from this text, but from the seven hundred year old interpretive tradition that literally surrounded it on the page. The editor has provided a part of the famous handbook that was used for the study of Dionysian theology at the University of Paris in the thirteenth-century, and should make an important contribution to a range of debates in contemporary medieval studies.