The Celestial Hierarchy
The Celestial Hierarchy (De caelesti hierarchia) is the principal angelological treatise of the Christian Neoplatonist writing under the name Dionysius the Areopagite, probably in the late fifth or early sixth century. It interprets biblical images of heavenly beings as a graded economy of purification, illumination, and perfection, famously arranging nine angelic orders in three triads. Through its Greek and Latin transmission, its vocabulary of hierarchy and participation became enormously influential in Byzantine and medieval Latin theology, including the angelology of Aquinas and later commentators. Schola presents the work in Latin and English.
CAPITULUM PRIMUM. Quomodo omnis divina illuminatio secundum bonitatem varie in praevisa proveniens manet simpla, et non hoc solum sed et unificat illuminata.
“Every best gift, and every perfect gift, is from above, descending from the Father of lights.” And every procession of the manifestation of lights, moved by the Father, coming to us most excellently and abundantly, again fills us as a unifying power that restores us, and converts us to the unity of the gathering Father and to deifying simplicity. For “from Him are all things, and unto Him,” as the divine Word says.
Therefore, invoking Jesus, the paternal Light, which is the true Light, “which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world,” through whom we have had access to the principal Light, the Father, we shall look, as far as possible, upon the illuminations handed down by the Father in the most sacred sayings. And from these we shall consider, as far as we are able, the hierarchies of the heavenly minds, manifested to us symbolically and anagogically.
Receiving with the immaterial and undisturbed eyes of the mind the principal and super-principal brightness of the divine Father, which manifests to us in figurative symbols the most blessed hierarchies of the angels, we are again restored from it into its own simple ray. For that ray is never, anywhere, separated from its own proper and singular unity. Yet, for the anagogical and unifying tempering of the things provided for, it is multiplied and proceeds most excellently and beautifully; and still it remains securely within itself, fixed uniformly in immutable sameness. And those who look toward it, as far as is permitted, it proportionally extends and unifies according to its own simple unity.
For it is not possible for the divine ray to shine upon us otherwise than by being anagogically veiled around with a variety of sacred coverings, and by being prepared in a way naturally and properly adapted to our condition through paternal providence.
For this reason also, the sacred ordering of our most holy hierarchy, judging itself worthy of a supermundane imitation of the heavenly hierarchies through the initiatory principles of the sacred rites, has handed down those immaterial hierarchies varied by material figures and formal compositions, so that, proportionately to ourselves, we may ascend from the most sacred forms to the simple and unfigured heights and likenesses.
For it is not possible for our mind to ascend to that immaterial imitation and contemplation of the heavenly hierarchies unless it uses the material guidance suited to itself: considering visible forms as images of invisible beauty; sensible sweetnesses as figures of invisible distribution; material lights as images of immaterial brightness; sacred teachings made accessible as images of contemplative fullness according to the intellect; and the ordered habits of those dispositions found here as images of those who are united to divine things and rightly ordered. Likewise, it regards the reception of the most divine Eucharist itself as participation in Jesus, and whatever other things have been handed down to heavenly beings in a supermundane manner, but to us symbolically.
Therefore, because of this rational deification suited to us, the merciful Principle of perfection, both manifesting to us the heavenly hierarchies and perfecting our own hierarchy as their fellow-minister, described in the sacred compositions of the Scriptures the supercelestial intelligences by sensible images, according to the measure of our power, through the likeness of His own deiform sanctification, so that He might lead us back through sensible things to intellectual things, and from sacredly figured symbols to the simple summits of the heavenly hierarchies.”