The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite/Ecclesiastical Hierarchy/Caput VI

by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite

I. Concerning the Ranks of the Initiated.

Section I

  These, then, are the sacerdotal Ranks and elections, their powers, and
  operations, and consecrations. We must next explain the triad of the
  Ranks being initiated under them. We affirm then that the multitudes,
  of whom we have already made mention, who are dismissed from the
  ministrations and consecrations, are Ranks under purification; since
  one is being yet moulded and fashioned by the Leitourgoi through the
  obstetric Oracles to a living birth; and another is yet to be called
  back to the holy life, from which it had departed, by the hortatory
  teaching of the good Oracles; and another, as being yet terrorized,
  through want of manliness, by opposing fears, and being fortified by
  the strengthening Oracles; and another, as being yet led back from the
  worse to holy efforts; and another as having been led back, indeed, but
  not yet having a chaste fixedness in more Godlike and tranquil habits.
  For these are the Orders under purification, by the nursing and
  purifying power of the Leitourgoi. These, the Leitourgoi perfect, by
  their sacred powers, for the purpose of their being brought, after
  their complete cleansing, to the enlightening contemplation and
  participation in the most luminous ministrations.

Section II

  And a middle rank is the contemplative, which participates in certain
  Divine Offices in all purity, according to its capacity, which is
  assigned to the Priests for its enlightenment.

  For it is evident, in my opinion, that, that having been cleansed from
  all unholy impurity, and having acquired the pure and unmoved
  steadfastness of its own mind, is led back, ministerially, to the
  contemplative habit and power, and communicates the most Divine
  symbols, according to its capability, filled with every holy joy in
  their contemplations and communions, mounting gradually to the Divine
  love of their science, through their elevating powers. This, I affirm,
  is the rank of the holy people, as having passed through complete
  purification, and deemed worthy, as far as is lawful, both of the
  reverent vision, and participation of the most luminous Mystic Rites.

Section III

  Now the rank, higher than all the initiated, is the sacred Order of the
  Monks, which, by reason of an entirely purified purification, through
  complete power and perfect chastity of its own operations, has attained
  to intellectual contemplation and communion in every ministration which
  it is lawful for it to contemplate, and is conducted by the most
  perfecting powers of the Hierarchs, and taught by their inspired
  illuminations and hierarchical traditions the ministrations of the
  Mystic Rites, contemplated, according to its capacity, and elevated by
  their sacred science, to the most perfecting perfection of which it is
  capable. Hence our Divine leaders have deemed them worthy of sacred
  appellations, some, indeed, calling them "Therapeutae," and others
  "Monks," from the pure service and fervid devotion to the true God, and
  from the undivided and single life, as it were unifying them, in the
  sacred enfoldings of things divided, into a God-like Monad, and
  God-loving perfection. Wherefore the Divine institution accorded them a
  consecrating grace, and deemed them worthy of a certain hallowing
  invocation--not hierarchical--for that is confined to the sacerdotal
  orders alone, but ministrative, as being ministered, by the pious
  Priests, by the hierarchial consecration in the second degree.

II. Mysterion on Monastic Consecration.

  The Priest then stands before the Divine Altar, religiously pronouncing
  the invocation for Monks. The ordinand stands behind the Priest,
  neither bending both knees, nor one of them, nor having upon his head
  the Divinely-transmitted Oracles, but only standing near the Priest,
  who pronounces over him the mystical invocation. When the Priest has
  finished this, he approaches the ordinand, and asks him first, if he
  bids farewell to all the distracted--not lives only, but also
  imaginations. Then he sets before him the most perfect life, testifying
  that it is his bounden duty to surpass the ordinary life. When the
  ordinand has promised steadfastly all these things, the Priest, after
  he has sealed him with the sign of the Cross, crops his hair, after an
  invocation to the threefold Subsistence of the Divine Beatitude, and
  when he has stripped off all his clothing, he covers him with
  different, and when, with all the holy men present, he has saluted him,
  he finishes by making him partaker of the supremely Divine Mysteries.

Section I

  The fact that he bends neither knee, nor has upon his head the
  Divinely-transmitted Oracles, but stands by the Priest, who pronounces
  the invocation, signifies, that the monastic Rank is not for leading
  others, but stands by itself, in a monastic and holy state, following
  the sacerdotal Ranks, and readily conducted by them, as a follower, to
  the Divine science of sacred things, according to its capacity.

Section II

  And the renunciation of the divided, not only lives, but even
  imaginations, shews the most perfect love of wisdom in the Monks, which
  exercises itself in science of the unifying commandments. For it is, as
  I said, not of the middle Rank of the initiated, but of the higher than
  all.

Section III

  Therefore many of the things, which are done without reproach by the
  middle Rank, are forbidden in every way to the single Monks,--inasmuch
  as they are under obligation to be unified to the One, and to be
  collected to a sacred Monad, and to be transformed to the sacerdotal
  life, as far as lawful, as possessing an affinity to it in many things,
  and as being nearer to it than the other Ranks of the initiated. Now
  the sealing with the sign of the Cross, as we have already said,
  denotes the inaction of almost all the desires of the flesh. And the
  cropping of the hair shews the pure and unpretentious life, which does
  not beautify the darkness within the mind, by overlarding it with
  smeared pretence, but that it by itself is being led, not by human
  attractions but by single and monastic, to the highest likeness of God.

Section IV

  The casting aside of the former clothing, and the taking a different,
  is intended to shew the transition from a middle religious life to the
  more perfect; just as, during the holy Birth from God, the exchange of
  the clothing denoted the elevation of a thoroughly purified life, to a
  contemplative and enlightened condition. And even if now also the
  Priest, and all the religious present, salute the man ordained,
  understand from this the holy fellowship of the Godlike, who lovingly
  congratulate each other in a Divine rejoicing.

Section V

  Last of all, the Priest calls the ordained to the supremely Divine
  Communion, shewing religiously that the ordained, if he would really
  attain to the monastic and single elevation, will not merely
  contemplate the sacred mysteries within them, nor come to the communion
  of the most holy symbols, after the fashion of the middle Rank, but,
  with a Divine knowledge of the holy things received by him, will come
  to the reception of the supremely Divine Communion, in a manner
  different from that of the holy people. Wherefore, the Communion of the
  most holy Eucharist is also given to the sacerdotal Orders, in their
  consecrating dedications, by the Hierarch who consecrated them, at the
  end of their most holy sanctifications, not only because the reception
  of the supremely Divine Mysteries is the consummation of each
  Hierarchical reception, but because all the sacred Orders, according to
  their capacity, partake of the self-same common and most godly gifts,
  for their own elevation and perfection in deification. We conclude,
  then, that the holy Mystic Rites are, purification, and illumination,
  and consecration. The Leitourgoi are a purifying rank, the Priests an
  illuminating, and the Godlike Hierarchs a consecrating. But the holy
  people is a contemplative Order. That which does not participate in the
  sacred contemplation and communion, is a Rank being purified, as still
  under course of purification. The holy people is a contemplative Rank,
  and that of the single Monks is a perfected Rank. For thus our
  Hierarchy, reverently arranged in Ranks fixed by God, is like the
  Heavenly Hierarchies, preserving, so far as man can do, its
  God-imitated and Godlike characteristics.

Section VI

  But thou wilt say that the Ranks undergoing purification utterly fall
  short of the Heavenly Hierarchies (for it is neither permitted nor true
  to say that any heavenly Ordering is defiled), yea, I would altogether
  affirm myself, that they are entirely without blemish, and possess a
  perfect purity above this world, unless I had completely fallen away
  from a religious mind. For if any of them should have become captive to
  evil, and have fallen from the heavenly and undefiled harmony of the
  divine Minds, he would be brought to the gloomy fall of the rebellious
  multitudes. But one may reverently say with regard to the Heavenly
  Hierarchy, that the illuminating from God in things hitherto unknown is
  a purification to the subordinate Beings, leading them to a more
  perfect science of the supremely Divine kinds of knowledge, and
  purifying them as far as possible from the ignorance of those things of
  which they had not hitherto the science, conducted, as they are, by the
  first and more Divine Beings to the higher and more luminous splendours
  of the visions of God: and so there are Ranks being illuminated and
  perfected, and purifying and illuminating and perfecting, after the
  example of the Heavenly Hierarchy; since the highest and more Divine
  Beings purify the subordinate, holy, and reverent Orders, from all
  ignorance (in ranks and proportions of the Heavenly Hierarchies), and
  filling them with the most Divine illuminatings, and perfecting in the
  most pure science of the supremely Divine conceptions. For we have
  already said, and the Oracles divinely demonstrate, that all the
  heavenly Orders are not the same, in all the sacred sciences of the
  God-contemplating visions; but the first, from G.od immediately, and,
  through these, again from God, the subordinate are illuminated, in
  proportion to their powers, with the most luminous glories of the
  supremely Divine ray.