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Hierotheus, a Writer

Wace's Dictionary of Early Christian Biography

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Hierotheus, a writer whose works are quoted by the Pseudo-Dionysius, who styles him his teacher. Two long extracts are preserved in the de Divinis Nominibus of the Pseudo-Dionysius (c. 2, §§ 9, 10; c. 4, §§ 15–17), and there are incidental references to him elsewhere. In the first extract (c. 2, § 9 fin.) his Theological Institutes ( θεολογικαί στοιχειώσεις ) are cited; in the second his Amatory Hymns ( ἐρωτικοι ὕμνοι ). His writings most probably belong to the school of Edessa, and should be dated about the middle or end of 5th cent. In confirmation of this view Dr. Westcott has noted a statement in Assemani (Biblioth. Orient. ii. 290, 291) that Stephen Bar-Sudaili, abbat of a monastery at Edessa, published a book under the name of Hierotheus to support his own mystic doctrines. Assemani says that this abbat held the doctrine of final restoration as taught by Origen, and was abused for it by Xenaias and James of Sarug, bp. of Batnae ( Bibl. Or. i. 303 ii. 30–33; Ceillier, x. 641; Westcott on Dionys. Areop. in Contemporary Rev. May, 1867). The mystical views in the works of Hierotheus and Dionysius easily lend themselves to the support of that theory. According to Assemani (ii. 291), Bar-Sudaili wrote under the name of Hierotheus to prove "finem poenarum aliquando futurum, nec impios in saeculum saeculorum puniendos fore, sed per ignem purgandos; atque ita et malos daemones misericordiam consequuturos esse, et cuncta in divinam naturam transmutanda, juxta illud Pauli, ut sit Deus omnia in omnibus." In Mai's Spicilegium Romanum (iii. 704–707) will be found other fragments of this writer, translated from some Arabic MSS. Their theology savours, however, more of the 4th and 5th cents. than of the 1st. But see A. L. Frothingham, Stephen Bar-Sudaili and the Book of Hierotheos (Leyden, 1886).

[G.T.S.]