DE DIONYSIO AREOPAGITA

but the Patriarch of Antioch from the year 528 to 546, who was numbered among the principal defenders of the Council of Chalcedon; whose disciple Isaac the Syrian the Younger, that Bishop of the Ninevites famous toward the end of the 6th century, and whose book On the Angels—if any age ever produced one—in which that testimony concerning Dionysius the Areopagite cited by Arnoldus exists, we can easily concede to have existed. What consolation, therefore, redounds to Arnoldus and the defenders of the Pseudo-Dionysius from this authority of Isaac the Syrian, and what solid evidence has been brought against it by us, let the impartial reader now judge.

Next in order is Juvenalis, to whom Arnoldus appeals, who was first Bishop of Ephesus and later of Jerusalem. We most willingly confess that he lived and wrote after the Council of Chalcedon—that is, in the middle of the 5th century after the birth of Christ—but we altogether deny that he ever supported the cause of the Pseudo-Dionysius. For we have nothing of his own writings, except for the Synodical Epistle to the Priests, Archimandrites, and remaining monks of Palestine, in which he confirms the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon in his own name and that of his fellow bishops, which Labbeus displays in Latin in Concil. Vol. IV, p. 889. In this, however, there is not even a mention of Dionysius or his writings. Therefore, Nicephorus Callistus must accomplish the whole business: for they say that he reports in Eccl. Hist. Book XV, ch. 14: That Juvenalis, being asked by Pulcheria, the wife of the Emperor Majorianus, whether the body of the Holy Virgin was to be found among the Palestinians, replied that he knew what he knew about the burial of the Virgin Mary from tradition as well as from Dionysius. We could indeed rest on the mere mention of Nicephorus, since to name him is to refute him.