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This short commentary on the Mystical Theology of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite is printed by Migne among the works of John Scottus Eriugena, but its method and vocabulary point to a later medieval glossator. The prologue explains why the books of Dionysius were rarely found: heretics destroyed them as opposed to their views, and catholics were bound by Dionysius’s own injunction not to reveal them to the unlearned. The writer suggests that Jerome omitted Dionysius from his De viris illustribus for the same reason. The commentary then gives the text of the treatise in sections, each followed by a gloss.
The glosses explain the Dionysian ascent to God by negation, in which the soul, through an excess of mind beyond intellect, seeks to know God in a darkness brighter than light, as in the sample. The text belongs to the medieval tradition of reading the Dionysian corpus through glosses and commentaries, and its attribution to Eriugena is doubtful. It is printed here as a witness to that later tradition of Dionysian study.
About this edition. The Latin text comes from Corpus Corporum, the Latin text repository of the University of Zurich (edition: Jacques-Paul Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. 122, Parisiis 1853), reused with attribution for non-commercial purposes (CC BY-NC-SA). Every word has been analyzed with LatinCy, a neural language model for Latin — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from Lewis & Short’s A Latin Dictionary.