Theologian and Mystic. Born in the small village of Rijkel, a few miles off Sint-Truiden in what is nowadays part of the Belgian Province of Limburg, Denis the Carthusian received his first education at Sint-Truiden and Zwolle. Deciding to enter monastic life, being by then aged only eighteen he was asked by the Carthusians of Roermond to undergo further studies for having not yet reached the age required by the statutes of the Order. Thus, on the advice of the prior of the said monastery, he frequented in the meantime the University of Cologne, earning a degree as Master of Arts. Entering the Carthusian Order in Roermond in 1424, he soon distinguished himself for his zeal and dedication, with all accounts of his life marveling at the fact that in spite of all his writings, he never excused himself from his duties as a monk, dividing his day first to prayer and second to study and writing, being said in fact that he devoted eight hours a day to prayer and receiving mass alone while reserving just three hours each night for sleep. Accompanying Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa on his legatine visitation of the Rhineland and the Low Countries in an attempt to reform the Church in Germany and to preach a crusade against the Turks, in July 1466 he was appointed to superintend the building of a monastery at Hertogenbosch but ill health forced him to move back to Roermond in 1469. Hailed as 'Doctor Ecstaticus' for the long ecstatic visions he received - said to have lasted hours - Pope Eugene IV after seeing one of his commentaries on the Holy Scripture is quoted to have said of him: "Let Mother Church rejoice to have such a son!". His voluminous writings - amounting to over one hundred fifty works, collected in forty three volumes - include commentaries on the entire Bible and over nine hundred sermons. During the last two years of his life he suffered intensely yet with exemplary patience from paralysis, the stone and other infirmities. When his remains were exhumed one hundred and thirty-seven years later, day for day, on March 12, 1608, his skull emitted a celestial perfume while the fingers he had most used in writing - the thumb and forefinger of the right hand - were found in perfect state of preservation. Although the cause of his beatification has never been introduced in regulation with the Carthusian statutes, various writers, including Saints Francis de Sales and Alphonsus Liguori, style him with the title of Blessed, while his life is found in the "Acta Sanctorum" of the Bollandists and his name in many martyrologies. A famous portrait featuring a Carthusian by Petrus Christus housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York is considered to possibly represent Denis. The relic cabinets carved in the walls of the Carthusian monastery of Roermond house the remains of the twelve Carthusian Martyrs of Roermond assassinated by troops of William of Orange in 1572 as well as the skull of Dionysius, kept in a wooden box.