Works
The great contribution of Denys the Carthusian was to synthesize all previous doctrine on the spiritual life and then to make an evaluation of the various conclusions. He wrote over 150 works, now presented as 43 volumes, which include commentaries on the entire Bible and over 900 sermons. He began by commenting the Psalms in 1434 and then went on to comment the whole of the Old and the New Testament. After seeing one of his commentaries Pope Eugene IV exclaimed: "Let Mother Church rejoice to have such a son!"
He commented also the works of Boethius, Peter Lombard, John Climacus, as well as those of, or attributed to, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. He also translated Cassian into easier Latin. He wrote theological treatises, such as his "Summa Fidei Orthodoxæ"; "Compendium Theologicum", "De Lumine Christianæ Theoriæ", "De Laudibus B. V. Mariæ", and "De Præconio B. V. Mariæ" (in both of which treatises he upholds the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception), "De quatuor Novissimus", etc.; philosophical treatises, such as his "Compendium philosophicum", "De venustate mundi et pulchritudine Dei" (a most remarkable æsthetic dissertation), "De ente et essentiâ", etc.; a great many treatises relating to morals, asceticism, church discipline, liturgy, etc.; sermons and homilies for all the Sundays and festivals of the year, etc.
As a theologian and a philosopher he belongs to no particular school. Although an admirer of Aristotle and Aquinas, he is neither an Aristotelian nor a Thomist in the usual sense of the words, but seems inclined rather to the Christian Platonism of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, St. Augustine, and St. Bonaventure. As a mystical writer he is akin to Hugh and Richard of St Victor, St. Bonaventure, and the writers of the Windesheim School, and in his treatises may be found summed up the doctrine of the Fathers of the Church, especially of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and ofMeister Eckart, Henry Suso, John of Ruysbroeck, and other writers of the German and Flemish Schools. He has been called the last of the Schoolmen. He is so in the sense that he is the last important Scholastic writer, and that his works may be considered to form a vast encyclopedia, a complete summary of the Scholastic teaching of the Middle Ages; this is their primary characteristic and their chief merit.
He was consulted as an oracle by men of different social standing, from bishops and princes downwards; they flocked to his cell, and letters came to him from all parts of the Netherlands and Germany. The topic of such correspondence was often the grievous state of the Church in Europe, i. e. the evils ensuing from relaxed morals and discipline and from the invasion of Islam. Soon after the fall of Constantinople (1453), impressed by revelations God made to him concerning the terrific woes threatening Christendom, he wrote a letter to all the princes of Europe, urging them to amend their lives, to cease their dissensions, and to join in war against their common enemy, the Turks. A general council being in his eyes the only means of procuring serious reform, he exhorted all prelates and others to unite their efforts to bring it about.
He wrote also a series of treatises, laying down rules of Christian living for churchmen and for laymen of every rank and profession. "De doctrinâ et regulis vitæ Christianæ", the most important of these treatises, was written at the request, and for the use, of the Franciscan preacher John Brugman. These and others which he wrote of a similar import, inveighing against the vices and abuses of the time, insisting on the need of a general reform, and showing how it was to be effected, give an insight into the customs, the state of society, and ecclesiastical life of that period.
His treatise "De Meditatione" was the last that he wrote in 1469.
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Famous quotes containing the word works:
“His character as one of the fathers of the English language would alone make his works important, even those which have little poetical merit. He was as simple as Wordsworth in preferring his homely but vigorous Saxon tongue, when it was neglected by the court, and had not yet attained to the dignity of a literature, and rendered a similar service to his country to that which Dante rendered to Italy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In doing good, we are generally cold, and languid, and sluggish; and of all things afraid of being too much in the right. But the works of malice and injustice are quite in another style. They are finished with a bold, masterly hand; touched as they are with the spirit of those vehement passions that call forth all our energies, whenever we oppress and persecute..”
—Edmund Burke (1729–97)
“The works of women are symbolical.
We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight,
Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir,
To put on when you’re weary or a stool
To stumble over and vex you ... “curse that stool!”
Or else at best, a cushion, where you lean
And sleep, and dream of something we are not,
But would be for your sake. Alas, alas!
This hurts most, this ... that, after all, we are paid
The worth of our work, perhaps.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)