Areopagite

Areopagite designates a member of the ancient Athenian court of the Areopagus, the council that convened on Mars' Hill to deliberate on matters of law, morals, and religion. In the New Testament the term applies to Dionysius, who is identified as one of the few converts made during Paul's address on the Areopagus during his visit to Athens (Acts 17:34). The brief notice—“But some men joined him and believed, among whom also was Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris”—suggests that while Paul's Athens ministry did not produce a large church, it did win over a member of the city's most prestigious judicial body.

The historical Dionysius the Areopagite of Acts has been distinguished from the corpus of mystical theological writings attributed to “Dionysius the Areopagite” that circulated from the late fifth century onward, now known to scholars as the Pseudo-Dionysian corpus. This later body of work exercised enormous influence on medieval Christian mysticism, but its authorship by the Athenian convert of Acts 17 is universally rejected on historical grounds.