Wednesday 19 April 2017

My walk today took me past a church formerly dedicated to "Dionysius" (or "Denis", for short). This name was taken up the middle ages in the form of a chaotic fusion of two people. The first was a judge, working on the Greek Acropolis (hence his name Dionysius the Areopagite)  who was converted to Christianity by the first disciples. The second was a 6th century mystic, who wrote a number of tracts - such as "the hierarchy of the angels" -  under the name of Dionysius". This latter person is now called "the pseudo Dionysius/Denis". I have rather of a soft spot for him: his writing is a sort of Middle-aged equivalent to science-fiction, a genre that I was fond of when young. On the rare occasions when the church is open and empty I drop in. There are angels in the stained glass windows, but they look very flabby compared to those of the pseudo Denis.

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