Dionysius the Areopagite is the nom de plume of the unknown author of the theological treatises and epistles that came to light in western Syria during the controversies provoked among Christians by the definition of the faith proclaimed in 451 by the Council of Chalcedon. The collection of his works, known to scholars as the Corpus Dionysiacum, the Corpus Areopagiticum, or the Dionysiaca, originated in Greek, was rendered into Syriac, and later came to be translated into Latin and the vernacular languages of medieval Europe. In the Christian Near East, east of the Anatolian Plateau, and in the Caucasus it appeared in Arabic and Armenian.

The tractates included in the Latin version of the Corpus Dionysiacum are De Divinis Nominibus (The Divine Names), De Mystica Theologia (The Mystical Theology), De Caelesti Hierarchia (The Celestial Hierarchy), and De Ecclesiastica Hierarchia (The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy); it also contains ten letters. Nothing is...