The Cloud of Unknowing Illustrated

That wisdom made its definite entrance into the Catholic fold about A.D. 500, in the writings of the profound and nameless mystic who chose to call himself "Dionysius the Areopagite." Three hundred and fifty years later, those writings were translated into Latin by John Scotus Erigena, a scholar at the court of Charlemagne, and so became available to the ecclesiastical world of the West. AnOther five hundred years elapsed, during which their influence was felt, and felt strongly, by the mystics of every European country: by St. Bernard, the Victorines, St. Bonaventura, St. Thomas Aquinas. Every reader of Dante knows the part which they play in the Paradiso. Then, about the middle of the 14th century, England--at that time in the height of her great mystical period--led the way with the first translation into the vernacular of the Areopagite's work. In Dionise Hid Divinite, a version of the Mystica Theologia, this spiritual treasure?house was first made accessible to those outside the professionally religious class.