For our purposes, however, perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Stephen’s work is his attitude to the eucharist. In describing the spiritual ascent of the soul toward God he writes:84
Then the mind enters into the mystic and glorious holy of holies not made with hands, that it may accomplish mystically and divinely the glorious and holy mystery of the holy and hallowing sacrament; which is a kind of simple and unlimited power which is extended so as to include divinely the essences that are united with it: and those glorious angels display a kind of yearning of desire to receive the eucharist and to be made partakers in the mystery thereof; and [the mind] approaches divinely the spiritual altar; and sacrifices itself, holily and divinely, in most wonderful and ineffable mystery, and is raised again, divinely and holily, in the secret of holy mystery. . . . Know, O my son, that the material and bodily bread which is set upon the material altar is a kind of perceptible sign—and, to tell the truth, a small and unworthy shadow—of that glorious bread which is above the heavens; and the cup of mixture also that is in our world: it too, is (only) a material sign of that glorious and holy drink of which the mind is accounted worthy in the place that is above. . . . A material and bodily sacrament, then, is right for those who walk according to the body; and when the question is asked, whether those minds which have been accounted worthy to receive and to give the spiritual sacrament still need the bodily sacrament, I, for my own part, would say that those who have been initiated by water have yet to be made perfect and those who are in the body must also receive bodily nourishment.
Once again, therefore, we encounter that same ambiguous attitude to the eucharist that we have seen within the writings both of Evagrius and of Pseudo-Macarius. Stephen—much like Pseudo-Macarius—is aware of potential accusations of antisacramentalism and is thus careful to acknowledge the place of the material eucharist within the general Christian life; but at the same time it is clear that he regards that eucharist as a mere imitation of a far more glorious and efficacious spiritual equivalent, of which the mind partakes in contemplation.
Stephen’s text emerged from a context in which other contemporaries had formed a quite different perspective both on the spiritual life and on the eucharist. The Book of the Holy Hierotheos has often been noted for certain correspondences that it shares with the corpus of another contemporary author, the neo-Platonic theologian writing under the pseudonym of the first-century Christian convert Dionysius the Areopagite. As with the Hierotheos of Stephen, the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius first emerged in anti-Chalcedonian circles in the early sixth century85—a provenance that has inspired numerous attempts to identify him with prominent miaphysite theologians of the period86—and as with the Hierotheos again, those writings have been alleged to contain the Origenist protological and eschatological positions condemned in Justinian’s fifteen anathemas.87 (We shall return to this accusation below.) The extent and direction of dependence between Stephen and the Areopagite is a matter of much contention.88 Karl Pinggéra, in the most recent and most extensive salvo in discussions, has argued for a distinction between a Grundschrift and a Redaktionsschicht within Stephen’s extant text, the latter extending the Evagrianism of the former but offering an explicit response to the Areopagite (and redacted, Pinggéra proposes, in Justinianic Palestine).89 These are, then, two texts that emerge in conversation with each other, and from the precise same theological milieu.90
Both the similarities and differences between the Corpus Dionysiacum and the extant version of the Book of the Holy Hierotheos are perhaps best represented in their treatment of a striking shared theme: that is, their mutual conception of the ninefold arrangement of celestial beings.91 There are two crucial and informative differences: where the Book imagines a hierarchical ordering that is both flexible and permeable—that is, in which beings can alter their rank in ascent—in the Areopagite’s vision all such ranks are fixed and immutable;92 and where the Book seems to have no terrestrial equivalent to its hierarchical ranking of the angels, and thus no terrestrial mediation between the individual and God, the Areopagite situates beneath his angelic host a further hierarchical structure corresponding to the various orders of the Church.93
This is not the place for a full exposition of Pseudo-Dionysius’s complex vision of the Church and its rituals.94 But for our purposes, it is important to note his striking perspective on the place of monks within the world. In his Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, an interpretation of the various Christian rites, the Areopagite propounds a vision of the cosmos as a strictly delineated terrestrial hierarchy, the function of which is to communicate divine illumination through its ranks, and for each rational being within those ranks to fulfill its hierarchical function and therein achieve divine union. He divides those ranks into three successive orders, defined through their closeness to God: first, the sacraments themselves; then those who initiate others in them; and then those who are initiated.95 He divides each of these ranks into three further divisions: the sacramental, into baptism, eucharist, and oil; the clerical, into deacons, priests, and bishops; and the laical, into the uninitiated, people, and monks. These threefold divisions also correspond to a neo-Platonic triad of purification, illumination, and perfection.96 The deacons offer purification to the uninitiated; the priests offer illumination to the people; and the bishops offer perfection to the monks.97 On monks themselves the Areopagite comments:98
However, the most exalted rank of all those being initiated [tōn teloumenōn] is the sacred order of monks [hē tōn monachōn diakosmēsis], which has been completely purified by its full power and total purity of its own operations, and inasmuch as contemplation of the sacred order [hierourgia] is permissible to it, it has entered into intellectual contemplation and communion [theōria kai koinōnia]. It is entrusted to the perfecting powers of the bishops [hierarchai] and through their divine illuminations and hierarchical traditions is instructed in the sacred works [hierourgiai] of the sacred sacraments that it has contemplated, and led, as much as it can be [analogōs], to the complete perfection of the sacred knowledge of them.
Ascetics, therefore, are regarded as exalted members of the congregation, but their structural and spiritual dependence upon bishops is emphatic.
For Pseudo-Dionysius, the hierarchical ordering of ecclesiastical structures has a strict soteriological function that is extinguished if subverted. This means, for example, that monks cannot exploit alternative paths to the perfection offered through the bishops or appropriate the functions of those clerical ranks above them. Instructive in this regard are the Areopagite’s Letters, a series of dramatic mise-en-scènes that provide examples of the hierarchical principles enshrined within the wider corpus.99 Thus in Letters 8, “To the Monk Demophilus,” he responds to an ascetic who has presumed to dismiss a priest who forgave a penitent sinner and then storm into the sanctuary and there save the eucharist from imminent defilement. The Areopagite offers a stinging rebuke that summarizes much of his thought upon the situation of monks:100
Now hear my words. It is not permissible for a priest to be reproached [euthunesthai] by the deacons who are above you or by the ranks of monks to which you belong, even if he appears to have acted impiously against the divine or might be convicted of having done something else forbidden. For even if there is chaos and disorder [akosmia kai ataxia] of the most divine things and an abandonment of the ordinances and laws, that is no reason to overthrow the God-given order on God’s behalf. . . . Do the sacred symbols [ta hiera sumbola] not also shout this? For the Holy of Holies [ta hagia tōn hagiōn] is not completely removed from all. Instead, the order of those who initiate in sacred things [ho tōn hierotelestōn diakosmos] is close to them, then the order of priests, and following them that of the deacons. To the ranks of monks are reserved the doors of the inner sanctuary, where they are both initiated and remain, not to guard them but rather to preserve order and their recognition of being closer to the people than the priests. From here the holy principle of ordering sacred things [hē tōn hierōn hagia taxiarchia] has ordained them to partake of the divine things, entrusting their distribution to others—that is, of course, those within. For those who are stood symbolically, as it were, at the divine altar see and hear the divine things that are brilliantly revealed