The Celestial Hierarchy

The book that gave the Middle Ages its nine orders of angels, and argued that scripture's crudest pictures of heaven are its safest.

by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite68 passages held

English, a translation held here, and your language

Original title: Περὶ τῆς οὐρανίας ἱεραρχίας
First published: 500(aged 25)
Original language: Greek

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Overview

Near the top of Dante's Paradiso, Beatrice sets out the nine orders of angels and remarks that Pope Gregory the Great ranked them differently, and smiled at his own mistake once he reached heaven, because the order set out in this treatise was the right one. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite places the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones nearest God, then the Dominions, Virtues and Powers, then the Principalities, Archangels and Angels: nine ranks in three groups of three. He is credited with the first use of hierarchia, a sacred order, as a noun, and he defines it as an arrangement through which each rank receives light from the rank above and passes it on below, so that every being is drawn as close to God as it is able to go. Before any angel appears, the book takes up a problem. Scripture shows heavenly beings as wheels of fire, as lions, oxen and eagles, and once calls God a worm. Dionysius argues that these crude images, "dissimilar symbols" in his phrase, are the safer ones: being so plainly unlike what they stand for, they cannot be mistaken for it, while a beautiful image tempts the reader to stop at the picture. The author writes as Paul's Athenian convert. In the ninth century Hilduin, abbot of Saint-Denis near Paris, identified him with Saint Denis, the martyred first bishop of Paris and the abbey's patron. When Peter Abelard, then a monk there, cited the Anglo-Saxon historian Bede against the abbey's account of its patron in 1121 or 1122, his brothers turned on him and he left. Scholars now place the writing around 500.

Key concepts

What does Dionysius mean by a hierarchy?

A sacred order through which God's light is received and passed on, not a chain of command. He defines it as an order, a knowledge and an activity, shaped as closely as it can be to the likeness of God. Each member takes in the light according to its capacity and hands it to those below, so rank measures how much one can give, not how much one owns.

What are the nine orders of angels?

Three groups of three. Nearest God stand the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones; then the Dominions, Virtues and Powers; then the Principalities, Archangels and Angels, who deal most directly with people. Each name is read for what it shows: Seraphim, from the Hebrew for burning or kindling, are the ones aflame with God, and Cherubim carry a fullness of knowledge, a stream of wisdom.

What are purification, illumination and perfection?

The three things every hierarchy does to those it raises. Purification clears away what is unlike God; illumination fills the cleared mind with divine light and understanding; perfection brings it to completion in that knowledge. Every rank of angels both undergoes these from the rank above and performs them for the rank below, which is how the one light reaches the lowest order without being lost.

What are dissimilar symbols?

Images of holy things taken from what is most unlike them. Dionysius calls scripture's pictures of heavenly beings as beasts, wheels or a worm dissimilar, and contrasts them with similar symbols, the beautiful and shining ones. The dissimilar kind is the more honest, because nobody could think God really is a worm, so the image points beyond itself instead of being taken for the thing.

Why are the angels called 'angels' at all?

Because the word means messenger, and every rank announces to the one below what it has received from above. Dionysius notes that the lowest order bears the name in its plain sense, since it brings God's messages to people, as when an angel announced the birth of Christ to the shepherds. The higher ranks can be called angels too, in a wider sense, because they also hand on light.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Nine ranks passing on one light

Why would a God who could reach every creature directly work through ranks of angels? Dionysius answers that the order itself is the gift: each rank is raised by receiving light and by handing it on.

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite defines a hierarchy as a sacred order, knowledge and activity, shaped as far as possible into the likeness of God. The Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones stand nearest God, then Dominions, Virtues and Powers, then Principalities, Archangels and Angels, and each rank is purified, illuminated and perfected by the one above it. The light is one and simple; ranks differ only in how much they can take in. Nothing is hoarded: to be high is to become a fellow worker with God in raising those below. Angels preside even over the nations outside Israel.

angelology
hierarchy
divine illumination
angelic hierarchy
purification
mediation
participation
divine imitation
spiritual ascent
providence

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Why the crudest images are the safest

Scripture shows heavenly beings as wheels, lions and oxen, and once calls God a worm. Should a reader be embarrassed by such pictures, or grateful for them?

Dionysius takes the side of the ugly images. A beautiful one, golden and radiant, tempts the reader to think heaven really looks like that and to stop at the picture. A plainly unfitting one, a bear, a panther, a worm, cannot be mistaken for what it stands for, and so pushes the mind past itself. Such images also keep holy things from the careless, who see only the rough surface. The method runs through the whole book, down to its last chapter, which reads the fire, the wings and the feet scripture gives the angels one by one.

religious symbolism
symbolism
analogy
symbolic theology
scriptural interpretation
revelation
divine revelation
apophatic theology
mystery
beauty

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Within this work

passages held: 68
distinct concepts: 104
by passages held, corpus-wide: #594

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “divine illumination” and “hierarchy”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 19 pairings. 72 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
divine illumination	hierarchy	11
angelology	hierarchy	9
angelology	symbolism	8
angelology	divine illumination	7
divine illumination	purification	4
hierarchy	purification	4
angelic hierarchy	divine illumination	3
angelic hierarchy	purification	3
angelology	religious symbolism	3
analogy	angelic hierarchy	2
analogy	angelology	2
analogy	hierarchy	2
analogy	purification	2
angelology	purification	2
divine illumination	symbolism	2
hierarchy	religious symbolism	2
analogy	divine illumination	1
analogy	religious symbolism	1
divine illumination	religious symbolism	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

500 The Celestial Hierarchy (Περὶ τῆς οὐρανίας ἱεραρχίας) you are here EN
500 The Divine Names (Περὶ θείων ὀνομάτων)
By the corpus's own cross-references it is the first of the surviving theological treatises: The Mystical Theology names it among the works written before it. It is also the longest work in the corpus, written around 500 under the name of Paul's Athenian convert.
EN
500 The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy (Περὶ τῆς ἐκκλησιαστικῆς ἱεραρχίας)
A walk through six rites of the church, written as the earthly sequel to The Celestial Hierarchy; after The Divine Names it is the longest treatise in the corpus. It is read here in John Parker's Victorian English.
EN
500 The Letters (Ἐπιστολαί)
The corpus ends on ten letters, from a few lines to many pages, addressed in that persona to Gaius, Dorotheus, Sopatros, Polycarp, Demophilus, Titus and John. Here the apostolic-age fiction is carried furthest.
EN
500 The Mystical Theology (Περὶ μυστικῆς θεολογίας)
The shortest of the four treatises, a few pages long, and the source of the language of darkness and unknowing that later mystics took up, from the Rhineland preachers to John of the Cross.
EN

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