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.
CAPITULUM II. Quam pulchre divina et caelestia etiam per dissimilia symbola manifestantur.
CAPITULUM III. Quid sit Ierarchia, et quae per Ierarchiam utilitas.
Hierarchy, according to my understanding, is a divine order, knowledge, and activity, assimilated as far as possible to the deiform, and ascending proportionally into the likeness of God according to the illuminations divinely bestowed upon it.
The divine Beauty, as simple, as supremely good, and as the principle of perfection, is altogether pure of every dissimilarity. Yet it distributes to each according to his worth the light proper to him; and it perfects in the most divine consecration, according to the compact and immutable formation of those perfected into conformity with itself.
Therefore, the meaning of hierarchy is likeness and union with God, as far as possible. Having God Himself as the leader of all sacred knowledge and action, and looking immutably toward His most divine beauty, hierarchy forms, as far as possible, its own praisers into divine images. It perfects them as most clear and pure mirrors, receptive of the principal light and divine ray. Having been sacredly filled with the brightness given to them, they again abundantly manifest that brightness to those who come after them, according to the divine laws.
For it is not lawful for the perfecters of holy things, nor for those who are sacredly perfected, to do anything at all contrary to their own perfective principles or sacred ordinations. Nor is it lawful for them to subsist otherwise than by desiring that divine brightness itself, reverently and fittingly looking toward it, and being reformed according to the proportion proper to each of the holy intelligences.
Does not, then, he who speaks of hierarchy declare a certain wholly sacred disposition: an image of divine beauty in hierarchical orders and sciences, celebrating the mysteries of its own illumination, and assimilated, as far as possible, to its own principle?
For the perfection of each of those who have received hierarchy consists in this: to ascend, according to his own proportion, into the imitation of God; and, what is more divine than all, as the Scriptures say, to become a fellow-worker with God, and to show forth the divine activity shining in himself, as far as possible.
For the order of hierarchy is this: some are purified, and others purify; some are illuminated, and others illuminate; some are perfected, and others perfect; each in whatever manner belongs to his deiform union.
The divine Blessedness, so far as it may be spoken of among men, is pure of every dissimilarity, full of eternal light, perfect, and lacking none of all perfection. It purifies, illuminates, and perfects.
Rather, it is holy purification itself, illumination itself, and perfection itself: above purification, above light, already perfect before all perfected things, perfect through itself, the principle of perfection through itself, the cause of every hierarchy and of every sacred thing according to its supereminent exaltation.
Therefore, as I judge, those who are to be purified must be made entirely pure and freed from every confusion of dissimilarity. Those who are to be illuminated must be filled with divine light and renewed, in the most chaste eyes of the mind, toward a contemplative habit and power. Those who are being restored from imperfection must become participants in the perfective knowledge of the sacred things that have been contemplated.
Those who purify, by the greatness of their purification, must hand on to others from their own purity. Those who illuminate, as more luminous minds, properly disposed both to participate in light and to distribute it, and richly filled with holy brightness, must in every way pour forth their superabundant light upon those who are worthy of light. Those who perfect, as teachers of the perfective tradition, must perfect those who are to be perfected by the most sacred doctrine, through knowledge of the sacred things contemplated.
Therefore, each order of the hierarchical disposition is led back, according to its own proportion, to divine cooperation, accomplishing, by grace and by God-given power, those things which are naturally and supernaturally united to the Thearchy, which are superessentially acted by it, and which are hierarchically manifested for the possible imitation of minds that love God.