THE HISTORY OF THE RESEARCH ON THE IDENTITY OF DIONISYUS THE (PSEUDO-)AREOPAGITE
THE HISTORY OF THE RESEARCH ON THE IDENTITY OF DIONISYUS THE (PSEUDO-)AREOPAGITE

Summary/Abstract: The quest for the real identity of the author of the Corpus Dionysiacum is one of the most challenging scientific approaches in the history of pseudonymous writers. It did not only generate a list of candidates spread over multiple columns but also influenced the interpretation of the writings themselves which varied in a wide spectrum ranging from a Christian to a Greek-Roman polytheistic view. Although the endeavor to solve this impenetrable mystery seems doomed to failure, due to the lack of external evidence to confirm one hypothesis or the other, the effort of the scholars in the last century to untie this Gordian knot of the Christian Tradition was unprecedented, continuing to come, even today, with the most varied and surprising solutions. The present study covers the last 50 years of assiduous research on this theme and is intended to be a supplement to the indexing started by René Roques (1957) and updated, over a decade, by Ronald Frederick Hathaway (1965). The overall perspective on this subject allows us to make a few observations on the results and to come with possible pathways for future research.

• Details
• Contents