De Coelesti Hierarchia

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The beginning of De coelesti hierarchia in the Latin translation by Ambrogio Traversari . Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Lat. 171, fol. 1r (15th century)

De Coelesti Hierarchia ( ancient Greek Περὶ τῆς Οὐρανίας Ἱεραρχίας "About the heavenly hierarchy") is a pseudo-Dionysian work about angels written in Greek . It is dated to the late 5th or early 6th century.

Reception and content

The work had a great influence on scholastic theology and deals in great detail with the hierarchy of angels. In addition, it influenced the theological development of the Orthodox churches .

Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica (I.108) follows the Hierarchia (6.7) in the idea of ​​the heavenly armies. He divides the angels into three hierarchies, each with three ranks, depending on their proximity to God. These nine choirs of angels were also taken over by Pope Gregory I.

It distinguishes:

  1. Seraphim, Cherubim and Throne Angels
  2. Rulers, virtues and powers
  3. Heads, archangels and angels

In this division, the hierarchy loosely follows a quotation from the Bible from Rom. 8:28  EU .

The metaphorical character of the angel teaching

The angels doctrine of De Coelsti Hierarchia is to be understood in light of the methodological considerations in the second chapter of the work. Dionysius explains here that he intends "to study the heavenly hierarchies [of the angels] according to their own revelation in the Holy Scriptures." The author therefore bases his presentation on biblical statements.

These biblical statements should by no means be taken literally: For example, the author warns, “Do not - like the uneducated crowd - succumb to the blasphemous view that heavenly and god-like beings were figures with many feet and all kinds of faces, or based on animal models created by bulls or in the form of predatory animals, like lions, or after the pattern of eagles with crooked beaks or like birds with bushy plumage [...] "- although angels are described in exactly the same way in the Bible by the prophet Ezekiel (cf. Ezekiel 1, 5 -14). The reason for such actually misleading pictorial descriptions of the heavenly beings in the Bible is that "the revelation [has] used poetically sacred forms in order to let formless spirits appear before us, because they [...] took our cognitive faculties into account."

The use of actually inappropriate pictorial statements about the angels is unavoidable due to their transcendent nature: "The descriptions of the holy scriptures [...] do not disgrace the heavenly orders [...] if they try to clarify them through dissimilar designs, since there are no similar ones can give. It is precisely through this that they indicate their being as transcendent and show us that it remains inaccessible to all material things. "

So Dionysius is less concerned with making statements about what exactly it looks like in heaven. It is more important that the graded order of the angels in the representation of Dionysius is a symbol for the stages of the mystical path of the soul to the experience of God: “ De caelesti hierarchia examines how one can understand the biblical nine angel choirs in such a way that [...] them for our ascent to God are relevant. "

Editions and translations

  • Günter Heil, Adolf Martin Ritter (Ed.): Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita. De Coelesti Hierarchia, De Ecclesiastica Hierarchia, De Mystica Theologia, Epistulae (= Corpus Dionysiacum 2). De Gruyter, Berlin 1991; 2nd revised edition 2012, ISBN 978-3-11-027706-7 .
  • The alleged writings of St. Dionysius Areopagita on the two hierarchies. Translated from the Greek and provided with explanations by Josef Stiglmayr SJ Library of the Church Fathers , Kempten and Munich 1911 ( archive.org ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dionysius Areopagita: The hierarchy of angels. The origin of the Christian angel teaching Amerang 2010 (reprint of the Munich 1955 edition), translation: Walther Tritsch, p. 20.
  2. ↑ Dionysius Areopagita: The hierarchy of angels. The origin of the Christian angel teaching Amerang 2010 (reprint of the Munich 1955 edition), translation: Walther Tritsch, p. 20
  3. ↑ Dionysius Areopagita: The hierarchy of angels. The origin of the Christian angel teaching Amerang 2010 (reprint of the Munich 1955 edition), translation: Walther Tritsch, p. 21
  4. ↑ Dionysius Areopagita: The hierarchy of angels. The origin of the Christian angel teaching Amerang 2010 (reprint of the Munich 1955 edition), translation: Walther Tritsch, p. 25.
  5. ↑ Bernard McGinn: The Mysticism in the Occident Volume 1: Origins Freiburg 1994. P. 237