8. Letter Eleven. To Abbot Adam and the Monks of St. Denis
letter eleven. To Abbot Adam and the Monks of St. Denis Letter Eleven is addressed to the abbot and monks of St. Denis
(whose name in Latin is Dionysius), the royal abbey to which Abelard had withdrawn not long after his defeat at the Council of Soissons in March 1121. It must have been written between then and 19
February 1122, when Abbot Adam of St. Denis, the first-mentioned addressee of the letter, died.1 This span of time likely coincides with the period when Abelard began to compile the Sic et non, and it offers a nice demonstration in practice of the methods he outlines theoretically in the prologue to his famous treatise. To our eyes the procedures he follows in the letter may seem reminiscent of historical criticism.
The backdrop to Letter Eleven can be reconstructed from the Historia calamitatum, written about a dozen years later and much less diplomatic in tone, which relates how Abelard noticed that a passage in the Venerable Bede's (died 735) Super Acta apostolorum expositio (Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles) conflicted with a passage in Hilduin's (died 855) Historia or Gesta Dionysii (History or Deeds of St. Denis, commissioned in 835) about where Dionysius the Areop1. February is the death date as given by Clanchy, Abelard, 337; 9 January 1122 by Hubert Silvestre, "Aratus pour Arator: un singulier lapsus d'Abélard," Studi medievali,
3rd series, 27 (1986): 221–24, at 221.
other controversi es agite had been bishop.2 Though in his autobiographical letter Abelard tried to pass off his discovery of the contradiction and his announcement of it to the monks as having happened casually and even jokingly ("quasi jocando monstravi"), he had to have been entirely aware of the enormous weight that the seemingly small discord between two sources carried. Indeed, the inconsistency led Abelard to express the doubt that St. Denis/Dionysius (after whom the abbey was named, and around whose tomb it was built), the apostle of France, and Dionysius the Areopagite, an Athenian convert of St. Paul (Acts 17.34), were one and the same. By pointing out this contradiction, Abelard drove a wedge not only explicitly between Denis/Dionysius and Dionysius the Areopagite but also implicitly between Denis/Dionysius and the fifth-century figure now known as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Pseudo-Dionysius was the author of the Corpus Areopagiticum, which encompassed a number of famous texts (such as The Divine Names, Mystical Theology, Celestial Hierarchy, and others) that helped to transmit Neoplatonism to the Middle Ages.3
To lessen the prestige of St. Denis by dissociating him from the biblical Dionysius and from the pseudonymous author of the same name was to insult not merely the abbey named in his memory but also the very kingdom that (and king who) took him as patron saint.
Though Abelard was essentially correct in his sifting of the evidence, 2. See Historia calamitatum, ed. Monfrin, pp. 89–91, lines 941–81; trans. Radice, pp.
26–27. For the first source, see Bede, Super Acta apostolorum expositio, 17.34, ed. M. L. W.
Laistner, CCSL 121 (1983): 1–99, at 68, lines 1–6; English: Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, trans. Lawrence T. Martin, Cistercian Studies 117 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1989), 145. For the second, see Hilduin, Vita s. Dionysii, sive Areopagitica, in PL 106.9–50.
3. See Édouard Jeauneau, "Denys l'Aréopagite, promoteur du néoplatonisme en Occident," in Néoplatonisme et philosophie médiévale: Actes du Colloque international de Corfou, 6–
8 octobre 1995 organisé par la Société internationale pour l'étude de la philosophie médiévale, ed. Linos
G. Benakis, Société Internationale pour l'Etude de la Philosophie Médiévale: Rencontres de Philosophie Médiévale 6 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1997), 1–23, and Adolf Martin Ritter, "Die Absicht des Corpus Areopagiticum," in Christian Faith and Greek Philosophy in Late Antiquity: Essays in Tribute to George Christopher Stead, Ely Professor of Divinity, University of Cambridge (1971–1980) in Celebration of His Eightieth Birthday, 9th April
1993, ed. Lionel R. Wickham, Caroline P. Bammel, and Erica C. D. Hunter, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 19 (Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1993), 171–89.
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his brethren in the monastery of St. Denis understandably took no pleasure in being enlightened by his new perspective. On the contrary, unhappy to find the historicity of their patron undermined by a new arrival who had plainly already not ingratiated himself with them (among other things, by insisting on continuing to teach), the monks alerted their abbot, Adam. In turn, Abbot Adam threatened to notify the king so that he could punish Abelard, on the grounds that a sally against Denis was ipso facto an act of lèse-majesté, since the saint was the patron of the royal family. Although in the Historia calamitatum Abelard may have overstated his panic, he reports that he left the abbey stealthily by night and took refuge outside the kingdom of France, in the territory of Count Thibaud (Theobald) of Champagne. In the end the story sorted itself out to Abelard's advantage, since not too much later Abbot Adam passed away and his successor, Abbot Suger, permitted Abelard to leave St. Denis so long as he did not submit to another abbot.4
Beyond the hornet's nest of questions surrounding Denis/Dionysius, Abelard stirred up a problem that to be resolved might require questioning the authority of either the Venerable Bede or, even more troublingly for the monks, Hilduin, a former abbot of St. Denis
(814–840); Hilduin had written his "Deeds of St. Denis" at the instigation of no less than Emperor Louis the Pious (778–840). It was
Hilduin who had first promulgated the view—or, to be less mealymouthed, the confusion—that St. Denis and Dionysius the Areopagite (and, by extension, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, although
Abelard does not mention the pseudonymous author in Letter Eleven) were identical.
Here as in the examination of the Lord's Prayer and of the Cistercian liturgy that he wrote to Bernard about a decade later (Letter
Ten), Abelard shows his consistency in articulating and practicing principles for the critical study and comparison of texts. In this case he addresses himself to the third question raised in the prologue to the Sic et non, that of homonymy or synonymy:
4. Ed. Monfrin, p. 91, lines 976–89; trans. Radice, p. 27.
other controversi es The greatest barrier to our understanding is the unusual style and the fact that very often the same words have different meanings, when one and the same word has been used to express now one meaning, now another.5
One Dionysius is not automatically identical with another.
History has proven Abelard right in the basic line of his reasoning, namely, that we are dealing with a conflation of more than one
Dionysius. First, Dionysius the Areopagite was a pagan Athenian philosopher who was converted by St. Paul, according to Acts 17.34:
"But certain men, adhering to him, did believe: among whom was also Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them." A second-century tradition held that this Dionysius was the first bishop of Athens. Second, Bishop Dionysius of Corinth (about 170), mentioned by Eusebius of Caesarea (263–339) in the Historia ecclesiastica (Ecclesiastic History), a Greek work available in Latin as translated and extended by Rufinus of Aquileia (345–
410), is not said to have been a martyr. Third, the Dionysius who has become known as St. Denis was placed by the oldest extant sources in the mid-third century, when he was supposedly martyred under either the Roman emperor Decius (249–251) or Aurelian (270–275).
Only later did it become believed that he had been sent by Pope Clement I (88–97) to Gaul, where he suffered martyrdom with his companions under the Roman emperor Domitian (81–96). Last but not least is the author who is known now as Pseudo-Dionysius—and who is known now not to have been who he claimed to be.6 Named only once as Dionysius (with no qualifications), he is not referenced by any Church writer before the first half of the sixth century. He appears to have been a Christian Neoplatonist of Greece or Egypt
5. Ed. Boyer and McKeon, p. 89, lines 11–13, "Ad quam nos maxime pervenire impedit inusitatus locutionis modus ac plerumque earundem vocum significatio diversa, cum modo in hac modo in illa significatione vox eadem sit posita"; trans. A. J. Minnis and A. B. Scott, Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism, c. 1100–c. 1375: The CommentaryTradition (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1988), 87.
6. See David E. Luscombe, "Denis the Pseudo-Areopagite in the Middle Ages from Hilduin to Lorenzo Valla," in Fälschungen im Mittelalter. Internationaler Kongreß der
Monumenta Germaniae Historica, München, 16.–19. September 1986, ed. Wolfram Setz, Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica 33/1–5, 5 vols. (Hannover, Germany: Hahn,
1988), 1: 133–52 (147–48 on Abelard).
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who wrote at the end of the fifth or beginning of the sixth century but who presented himself as having lived in the apostolic age.
In Letter Eleven, Abelard attempts methodically to sort out the evidence for and against identifying St. Denis/Dionysius with Dionysius the Areopagite. The letter represents a practical application of the techniques for logical evaluation set forth in the Prologue to the Sic et non. First the passages in question (in medieval terms, the "authorities") are quoted, then they are dissected with an eye to determining whether they contradict each other or whether they merely diverge from each other without demonstrating fundamental incompatibilities. In this case Abelard quotes three passages, one from Eusebius's Ecclesiastic History, a second from Jerome's De uiris inlustribus (On Illustrious Men), and a third from Bede's commentary on the Acts of the Apostles.7 Abelard shows that the first two passages, which are pulled from more authoritative texts, subvert the third. In the end he advances three possible explanations for Bede's divergence from the other two sources. One is that Bede was misled by the identity of the names (in Latin) and erred; another is that he was repeating the views of others, who should be held accountable for the mistake; and the third is that Bede knew of two Dionysiuses who were both bishops of Corinth. Incidentally, apparently even Abelard sometimes slipped, since at one point in this letter he appears to conflate the ancient Greek poet Aratus of Soli (about 315–about 245 b.c.e.) with the sixth-century Christian Latin poet Arator.
Letter Eleven is a genuine letter in that it opens with a salutation and closes with a valediction. Its transmission suggests that it was intended for public consumption, as was commonly the case with letters in the Middle Ages. It survives exclusively in manuscripts not with other items from Abelard's correspondence, but rather with writings concerning St. Denis.8 In what seems an irony, Letter Eleven may owe its existence to the wrongheaded surmise of the monks at 7. Jerome, De uiris inlustribus 27, ed. Aldo Ceresa-Gastaldo (Florence, Italy: Nardini Editore, Centro internazionale del libro, 1988), 122; On Illustrious Men, trans. Thomas P. Halton, Fathers of the Church 100 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1999), 50–51.
8. Smits, Letters IX–XIV, 28–29.
other controversi es St. Denis that it supported the identity of St. Denis and Dionysius the Areopagite.9 Such an inference has scant basis in fact. Though conciliatory, the letter is absolutely unyielding in emphasizing the need to face the realities of the testimony about Dionysius in Bede.
Four codexes transmit Letter Eleven: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 356 (third or fourth quarter of the twelfth century); Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 2445A
(fourth quarter of the twelfth century); Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 2447 (second half of the thirteenth century); and Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS nouv. acq. lat. 1509
(second half of the thirteenth century). Two further manuscripts were copied from the last mentioned. The edition followed is that of Smits.
Letter Eleven To Adam, his most beloved father, abbot (by the grace of God) of the monastery of the most glorious martyrs Dionysius [= St. Denis], Rusticus, and Eleutherius10 who rest there bodily, and at the same time to his dearest brothers and fellow monks, Peter, in habit a monk and in life a sinner, wishes "Grace to you and peace" (as the Apostle [Paul] said)
"from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" [Romans 1.7].
Often the error of one person engulfs many, and people inclined to evil are dragged more easily through one man into falsehood than through many into truth. Moreover, I say this for the reason that many are accustomed to set up the authority of Bede alone against the truth which I hold concerning Dionysius the Areopagite, minimizing either through ill will or perhaps through ignorance the weightier authorities which support me. For a certainty Bede avows that Dionysius the Areopagite was bishop of the Corinthians, although others whose authority is by far more
9. Smits, Letters IX–XIV, 153.
10. Bishop Dionysius, or Denis, was sent in the third century with five other bishops to convert Gaul. He was supposedly imprisoned together with his companions, the priest Rusticus and the deacon Eleutherius, before being beheaded.
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powerful assert instead that he was bishop of the Athenians, and they demonstrate by their declarations that Dionysius the Areopagite was one altogether distinct person, Dionysius the bishop of the Corinthians another.
Accordingly, let us set down the words of each one, and then consider if they are not only different, but even mutually opposed and entirely contradictory to each other. If we have ascertained this, let us differentiate between the authorities themselves so that, since they cannot all be preserved, that one which rests upon a lesser merit may be put to the test.11
About this matter it has been written in [Eusebius's] Ecclesiastic History Book 4, Chapter 23 in the following words:
We must come at length to recall blessed Dionysius, bishop of the Church of the Corinthians. Not only these peoples whom he had undertaken to guide, but also those people located far away to whom he accorded his presence through letters enjoyed his instruction and the grace that he had in the word of God. In fact, these survive, his epistle written to the Lacedaemonians about the Catholic faith [. . .] and another to the Athenians, in which he summons and stirs the more sluggish to belief in the Gospel. [. . .] And in the same epistle he indicates the fact that Dionysius the Areopagite, who after being instructed by the apostle
Paul believed in Christ (according to what is indicated in the Acts of the Apostles [17.34]), was ordained by the same apostle as the first bishop at Athens.12
11. As noted in connection with Letter Nine, Abelard uses the verb diiudicare (to discriminate) in the Prologue to the Sic et non, just before he quotes Jerome's letter to Laeta (which itself uses the word): "So too, blessed Jerome, although he put some teachers of the Church before others, advised us to read them in such a way as to discriminate between them rather than to follow them."
12. The quotation is from Eusebius, Ecclesiastic History 4.23.1–3, as translated and continued by Rufinus in Latin, ed. Schwartz and Mommsen, Eusebius Werke 2/1, Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte 9/1, 1: 375, lines
1–15. The only one of Dionysius's letters from which extracts have survived is his letter to the Romans, which (although not mentioned in this passage) is quoted earlier in Eusebius at 2.25.8, ed. Mommsen, 1: 179, lines 10–14.
other controversi es In addition, Jerome, that outstanding doctor of the Church, as I say, thus recalls about this same matter in the book On Illustrious
Men [27]:
Dionysius, the bishop of the Church of the Corinthians, was of such eloquence and industry that he instructed in his letters not only the peoples of his city and province, but also those of other provinces and cities. Of these letters one is to the Lacedaemonians and the other to the Athenians and so forth.13 And after a few words: "He came to fame under Emperor Marcus Antoninus Verus and Lucius Aurelius Commodus."14
Now let us set down the words too of Bede himself who, in explaining the Acts of the Apostles (in the passage where it is said
"Among whom Dionysius the Areopagite" [Acts 17.34]), stated as follows:
This is the Dionysius who, having been ordained to the episcopacy, guided the Church of the Corinthians gloriously and who, taking a nickname from the place which he oversaw, left many volumes marked by his talent which relate to the utility of the Church and which remain even today.
For Areopagus is the court of Athens, deriving its name from Mars, inasmuch as in Greek Mars is called Arios, village is called pagos.15
Consequently, now that the authorities have been introduced as we proposed, let us consider their difference or inconsistency as we promised. The two authorities cited above which are consonant with each other seem however entirely contradictory to the authority of Bede. On the basis of those two authorities it is plainly demonstrated that Dionysius the Areopagite was one person, Dionysius the bishop of the Corinthians another. For according to 13. De uiris inlustribus 27, ed. Ceresa-Gastaldo, 122.
14. Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus reigned together from 161 to 169.
15. Bede, Super Acta apostolorum expositio, 17.34, ed. Laistner, CCSL 121 (1983): 93, lines
1–11; Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, trans. Martin, 145. A more correct etymology would be "Hill of Ares," in reference to a promontory northwest of the Acropolis, which was used by Athenians in preclassical times for sittings of the council of elders and in classical times for the highest judicial court of the city.
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the Ecclesiastic History Dionysius the bishop of the Corinthians is reputed to have written about Dionysius the Areopagite, and in the same source Dionysius the Areopagite is imputed to have been bishop of the Athenians. And it is no less evident from the words of Jerome that the first was different from the second, since plainly he says that Dionysius the bishop of the Corinthians won fame under Marcus Antoninus and Lucius Aurelius.
It is established for a certainty that Dionysius the Areopagite, who was converted by the preaching of Paul, lived in the time of Christ and the apostles, and that he was already an adult man, to the point that it is established that he already then had a wife
Damaris, about whom recollection is made, together with him, in the Acts of the Apostles.16 For this reason it is also found written there that "certain men adhering to Paul did believe; among whom was also Dionysius the Areopagite, a woman named Damaris, and others with them" [Acts 17.34].
Moreover, from the time of Tiberius Caesar [14–37] under whom the Lord suffered, up until the times of those emperors under whom Dionysius of the Corinthians is said to have been renowned, the reckoning of the chronicles assigns more than one hundred and sixty years. As a result, the lifetime of the man who has been mentioned could in no way be sufficient for so great a time. Indeed it is written in the Psalms: "But if in the strong [they be] eighty years: and what is more of them is labor and sorrow"
[Psalms 89.10].
From this passage one can clearly gather that Dionysius the Ar16. Mulier, the word used to qualify Damaris in Acts 17.34, can mean either woman or wife. The fact that Damaris, identified as mulier, was named in the passage together with Dionysius ("Dionisius Ariopagita et mulier nomine Damaris") has sometimes led interpreters to assume, understandably but probably erroneously, that the two were husband and wife. The assumption is found (for example) in Ambrose, Epistola
14 (63), section 22, lines 236–37, in CSEL 82, no. 3: 247 (= PL 16: 1196A) "cum Damali uxore sua," as well as in Hilduin of St. Denis, Prolegomena (Rescriptum ad serenissimum imperatorem, dominum Ludovicum), in PL 106: 16A "cum . . . Damari uxore sua," and Passio s. Dionysii, Chapter 8, in PL 106: 28D "cum . . . Damari uxore sua."
other controversi es eopagite was one person, Dionysius the bishop of the Corinthians another. And so, by the statements of the authors who have been mentioned, we refute the opinion of Bede, especially also since their authority is by far weightier, and since it is more appropriate for a word to stand in the mouth of two [Matthew 18.16] than of one.17 For certain, Bede as well as other ecclesiastic writers resort to the Ecclesiastic History as the first and greatest basis of ecclesiastic history. What, then, does it seem to you that Bede can respond, if you have pointed out that those writings, by the authority of which he frequently defends himself, are opposed to him? In my opinion nothing is more correct than that verse of a wise man:
"He who is in conflict with himself will agree with no one."18
However, so that no one should take it badly and should recoil strongly from [thinking] that Bede is sometimes mistaken and that he produced certain statements through his own rather than divine inspiration (evidently for the reason that the Latin Church has especially frequent recourse to his commentaries), he should recall to memory the prophet Nathan who was mistaken about the building of the temple,19 and the baneful pretense of the very prince
[Peter] of the apostles that was corrected by his fellow apostle 17. Abelard frequently makes repeated use of the same quotation in different writings of his own. In this case, his partial quotation of Matthew 18.16 calls to mind a similar appearance of the verse in Letter Nine.
18. Abelard's source is the Distichs of Cato 1.4 (in Latin, Disticha Catonis, Catonis disticha, or simply Cato), a poem of short moral observations that was wrongly believed in the Middle Ages to have been written by Cato the Elder or Cato the Younger. Since the poem, which began with a section of monostichs and proceeded to the more numerous and famous distichs, was often one of the first readings assigned to a pupil learning Latin, Abelard needs not identify it in any way: the quotation would have been immediately recognizable to any reader.
19. The prophet Nathan, who succeeded Samuel, lived in the reigns of David and Solomon. He comes on the scene when David is considering building a temple to the Lord (2 Kings 7). First he assures David of the Lord's support, but then he is directed by the word of God to discourage the king from erecting the temple on the grounds that the honor of doing so was to be reserved for Solomon (2 Kings 7 and 1 Chronicles 17.1–15).
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Paul, "because" he said "he was to be blamed" [Galatians 2.11], and as well the venerable doctor Augustine who was not embarrassed to reconsider, of his own free will, his own errors in correcting almost all his writings.20 And let him think back to that old saying of Elijah: "For I am no better than my fathers" [3 Kings 19.4].
And then in truth when he has recalled the errors of such great men, he will cease to wonder at Bede's mistake.
Indeed, as blessed Gregory asserts in his first homily on Ezekiel, sometimes to maintain humility the Holy Spirit withdraws itself from the minds of the faithful and permits them to slip into error, so that (as it is clear) they may recognize how useless they are when the Holy Spirit departs.21 Even when it exercises control over the minds of the saints, it thus reveals some things so that it may keep others hidden. It is not a cause of great worry if we assert sometimes that saints made mistakes in literal matters or in such matters as do not lead to the endangerment of the Catholic faith, since obviously Augustine can be confirmed by Jerome to have been mistaken about the literal meaning of the Seventh
Psalm, in the title of which, it is plain to see, is read: "For the words of Chusi son of Jemini" [Psalms 7.1];22 inasmuch as Augustine was completely ignorant of the Hebrew language.23
If, however, anyone should strive to salvage the authority of Bede too, so that he may satisfy everyone, perhaps it will be per20. In 428 Augustine (354–430) wrote a work entitled Reconsiderations (Latin Retractationes), in which he passed a final judgment upon his earlier writings to correct what he deemed to be misleading or wrong.
21. Homiliae in Hiezechielem, 1.1.15, ed. Adriaen, CCSL 142 (1979): 12; Homilies, trans.
Gray, ed. Cownie, 18–19.
22. The title will not be found in the King James Version and its relatives, but it is counted as the first verse of the psalm in the Douay-Rheims version (as well, of course, as in the Vulgate).
23. In his commentary on this verse Augustine concludes by stating that "Chusi should be interpreted silence"; see Enarrationes in Psalmos, 7.1, ed. Eligius Dekkers and Johannes Fraipont, CCSL 38 (1956): 35–36. This assertion contrasts with Jerome's Liber interpretationis Hebraicorum nominum (Book on the Intepretation of Hebrew Names), in which Jerome interprets the name Chusi as meaning Ethiop or Ethiopia; see Liber in-
other controversi es mitted to say that in this passage Bede followed the view of others rather than that he established his own opinion. Indeed often, so that we may protect undamaged the authoritative statements of the saints, we attribute to the opinion of others rather than to their own views those things that they write. Thus let us say in this passage too that Bede introduced the opinion of others, who having been misled by the equivocality of the name believed that Dionysius the Areopagite and Dionysius of Corinth were the same person. For a certainty we see that even blessed Ambrose went so far astray from literal truth in a certain passage owing to the equivocality of a name as to assert that James, the brother of John whom the Lord took up apart from the rest at his transfiguration together with his brother John and with Peter [Matthew 17.1], was the James "who first mounted the priestly throne."24 This fact, it is established, must be understood about the other James, who both was called "the brother of the Lord" [Galatians 1.19] and was first ordained into the Church of Jerusalemites, so that clearly in this way this other James should be understood first to have mounted the priestly throne. If therefore so great a doctor may have been permitted to deviate from literal truth in the explication of the Gospels through the ambiguity of the name of James, what is the wonder if the ambiguity also of the name Dionysius deceived Bede and many others, especially in that commentary on the Acts of the terpretationis hebraicorum nominum, ed. Paul de Lagarde, CCSL 72 (1959): 63, line 14; 99, lines 3–4; 107, line 12; and 119, line 14.
The final phrase, translated here as "the Hebrew language," is Hebraica ueritas in Abelard's Latin. It could be put literally into English as "the Hebrew truth," but Jerome (with whom it originated) applied it in reference to the authenticity of the Hebrew Bible texts. For further information, see Letter Nine.
24. Expositio euangelii secundum Lucam, 7.9, ed. Marcus Adriaen, CCSL 14 (1957): 1–
400, at 218; Commentary of Saint Ambrose on the Gospel According to Saint Luke 7.9, trans. Íde
M. Ní Riain (Dublin: Halcyon Press/Elo Publications, 2001), 195. In Catholicism the two apostle Jameses are both saints, often differentiated as James the Greater, the son of Zebedee and brother of John; and James the Less, the son of Alpheus and brother of Jesus.
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Apostles which it is certain was reconsidered afterward by Bede himself? In fact, so that we might understand briefly his words in the short preface of his reconsideration, he began thus:
We know that the distinguished doctor [. . .] Augustine [. . .] produced books of Reconsiderations about certain works [. . .] of his. [. . .] It has suited us too [. . .] to imitate his industry, so that, after the commentary on the Acts of the Apostles which we wrote many years [. . .] previously, now we should set down a brief work of reconsideration about that same volume, above all out of a desire either to add to things that were said too briefly or to emend things which seemed to have been said differently from what I wanted.25
In that commentary he also frequently introduces verses of Aratus, some of whose mistakes we know, although clearly Jerome in the book On Illustrious Men shows that he erred about the same day on which Peter and Paul suffered their passions.26 Indeed, Aratus
25. Bede, Retractatio in Acta Apostolorum, preface, ed. M. L. W. Laistner and D. Hurst,
CCSL 121 (1983): 93, lines 1–11.
26. Abelard states that Bede knew in some form the verse of Aratus and used it frequently, which is a problematic assertion. The Stoic poet Aratus wrote a didactic epic entitled Phaenomena (about 270 b.c.e.), on the constellations and weather, which was highly regarded in the ancient world. St. Paul even cited a hemistich of it in his Areopagus speech (Acts 17.28). The poem was translated into Latin by Cicero. It is to the translation by Cicero that Jerome refers in his preface to Eusebius's
Chronicle, Epistula praefatoria in Chronicis Eusebii, ed. Rudolf Helm, Eusebius Werke 7/1–2,
Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte 24 and 34
(Leipzig, Germany: J. C. Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, 1913–1926), 1: 1–7, at 1, column 1, line 20–column 2, line 4. In the early Middle Ages the Greek of Aratus, translated in an abridged form, was supplemented with other material to form the Aratus
Latinus.
Although the works of Bede contain citations of Aratus here and there, a poet of the third century b.c.e. cannot very well have discussed the death dates of Peter and Paul. A poet whom Bede does in fact cite in his commentary on the Acts of the Apostles is the altogether different but similarly named poet Arator, who wrote in Latin verse a biblical paraphrase De actibus apostolorum (On the Acts of the Apostles).
This so-called Bible epic indicates an adherence to the theory that Peter and Paul died on the same day, but one year apart; see De actibus apostolorum, 2.1246–50, ed. Arthur Patch McKinlay, CSEL 72 (1951): 148–49, and Arator's On the Acts of the Apostles, trans. Richard J. Schrader, Joseph L. Roberts III, and John F. Makowski, Classics in
other controversi es as well as Bede, who in the Martyrology trusted in Aratus's authority, accept the day as being exactly the same, unless the span of a year had passed [between them], since Jerome pronounces that Peter as well as Paul suffered their passions on the very same day in the fourteenth year of Nero.27
To conclude, so that we may be able to lay to rest completely with a most serene conclusion this disagreement of different opinions, perhaps easily if we hypothesize that there existed two Dionysiuses who were bishops of the Corinthians, we will be able to maintain that Bede too was truthful and to take nothing by way of opinion, in such a way that one of the Bishop Dionysiuses of the Corinthians and Dionysius the Areopagite were the same as the one about whom Bede writes, and that at different times the same man was in charge at Athens and Corinth as bishop and that afterward he was ordained as apostle of Gaul by St. Clement, but that another of the Bishop Dionysiuses of the Corinthians was that Dionysius whom the Ecclesiastic History and Jerome call to mind;28 and so I judge that the whole contention could be resolved. Therefore, of all the things that we have advanced by way of resolving it, this is the summation: either we should concede that Bede was misled, or that he proffered the opinion of others to us, or that there existed two Bishops Dionysius of the Corinthians. Most beloved brethren, farewell in the Lord.
Religious Studies 6 (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1987), 94. On Abelard's confusion between the two poets, see Silvestre, "Aratus pour Arator," 221–24.
27. The relevant passage in the most recent edition of Bede's Martyrology contains no reference to either Aratus or Arator, but is clear in indicating that Paul died "on the same day as Peter"; see 29 June: III Kalendas Julii, in Edition pratique des Martyrologes de Bède, de l'anonyme Lyonnais et de Florus, ed. Jacques Dubois and Geneviève Renaud (Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1976), 116–17. Jerome refers to Peter and Paul's having died on the same day in the same year in his De viris illustribus, 1.5, in PL 23: 607–718, at 617A. Nero reigned from 54 to 68. In placing the death of Peter in 68, Jerome followed Eusebius. The likelier date is 64, when there was a persecution.
28. This is the Pope Clement I (88–97) who was credited with having dispatched the future martyr Denis to France.