PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE AND THE PSEUDO-DORMITION OF THE HOLY VIRGIN

This essay examines the role of the Holy Virgin in the Pseudo-Dionysian Corpus and concludes that this role is negligible. It also examines the only evidence that seems to contradict this conclusion, namely a text traditionally regarded as referring to the Dormition of the Mother of God and shows that it is instead a cryptic report on a Christ logical council, probably Chalcedon, seen through the eyes of a participant of Antiochian theological convictions. The essay concludes with the hypothesis that the author of the Corpus should be sought in the circles of Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and muses about how, in a time of intellectual persecution, artful writing techniques, such as that displayed in the Dionysian Corpus, are invented.