Denis The Carthusian - Works

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.