Opera Omnia; cum Scholiis S. Maximi et Paraphrasi Pachymerae

is deemed worthy of care; some grow old in bringing the most eloquent Chrysostom into the familiar acquaintance of men, while others devote themselves to the learned and diligent labor of adorning other authors. St. Dionysius alone, above all others, has struck my heart with a sharp thyrsus and occupied my soul's innermost feeling. To him I have dedicated my care and my vigils; I consider it a beautiful and blessed thing to pass away while commending his writings to eternal memory, especially since he is almost the only one among all the writers of antiquity in whom no one, to this day, has noted a lapse in doctrine. I am resolved and determined to solicit all the cabinets and caskets of my friends, and to ask all the learned into whose hands this writing may come, to lend to me whatever they possess among their scholarly resources that might serve, as it were, to array the procession of our Dionysius; they may be certain that whatever they send will be assigned a most honorable place by me, accompanied by a grateful and well-deserved commemoration of their name. For it is the proof of a noble mind, as the great Basil taught me long ago in his first Epistle: “If anything has been learned from another, one should not conceal it, like those base women who substitute supposititious children, but should acknowledge the father of the word with gratitude.”

Furthermore, when I learned from the talk and letters of many that many objections were being circulated by hostile men—not only by heretics who wage an everlasting war against the Church, but even by some Catholics who would bar the Areopagite from entering Gaul and who, by this work, would by no means have these writings be genuine—I believed it pertained to my loyalty and duty to undertake an Apologetic Disputation. Through this, I might in good faith vindicate both the man himself for Gaul and these illustrious and divine monuments for him. In this task, I have taken care to touch upon hardly any of those points which, so long ago, St. Maximus and the older Greeks, as well as more recent and most acute men, have already refuted in their published works. I have also brought forward the testimonies of most illustrious men and devised firm and powerful arguments by which this common opinion of nearly all nations and theologians—passed down to us from hand to hand by our ancestors and impressed upon us—might be more strongly confirmed. Therefore, just as virtue, though it be often assailed and harassed, yet always holds its ground, supported by firm roots, and cannot be uprooted by any machination of impious men, so the illustrious and unconquered Dionysius proceeds gloriously amidst such an onslaught of the envious. He eludes the missiles and attacks aimed at him by all, so that the golden lyre of the good poet sang most truly: “The children of the gods are indeed invulnerable,” for the sons of God are beyond harm.