Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/100

82 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. Neo-platonism. His last letter was one of respectful devotion to Hypatia ; his last prayer was to Christ ; " O Christ, Son of God most high, have mercy on Thy servant, a miserable sinner who wrote these hymns. Release me from the sins which have grown up in my heart, which are implanted in my polluted soul. O Saviour Jesus, grant that hereafter I may behold Thy divine glory." The man's hope flickers upward toward the last and most adorable figure of his pantheon. III. Dionysius the Areopagite The thought and opinions, even the moods of Syne- sius show a crude mixture of Christianity and the higher paganism. The pagan elements were scarcely modified by their new association. But in the writ- ings of Pseudo-Dionysius,^ there is a union of Chris- tian and pagan, Greek, oriental and Jewish, a union wherein the nature of each ingredient is changed. Theological philosophic fantasy has never built up anything more remarkable. It was a very proper product of its time; a construction lofty and sys- tematized, apparently complete, comparable to the 1 It would require a volume to tell the history of the controversy regarding the authorship of the famous Celestial Hierarchy and other writings purporting to be the works of Dionysius the Are- opagite, who heard Paul preach (Acts xvii. 34) . That contention is, of course, untenable. These writings were probably the product of Graeco-oriental Christianity of the fourth or fifth century. See, for a statement of the present status of the Pseudo-Dionysius or Pseudo-Areopagite question, the article on Dionysius in the Dic- tionary of Christian Biography ^ and Harnack's Dogmengeschichiey Vol. U, p. 426, note.