Dionysius the Areopagite was the judge of the Areopagus who, as related in Acts, xvii, 34, was converted to Christianity by the preaching of Saint Paul. According to Dionysius of Corinth, quoted by Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiae III: iv, this Dionysius then became a bishop of Athens.

In the course of time, however, a series of famous writings of a rather peculiar nature was ascribed to the Areopagite. They were long known to be a later fabrication in his name (pseudepigraphia ) and so were ascribed to the "Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite". The Pseudo-Dionysius who has been identified as numerous people, but in more modern times with an obscure Georgian writer named Peter the Iberian, a Georgian Bishop of Majum (452-491).

Dionysius was also popularly mis-identified with the martyr of Gaul, Dionysius, the first Bishop of Paris, Saint Denis.