Richard of St.-Victor, On the Apocalypse of John (selections)

A Companion to Medieval Art, 2006

This paper builds on my previous published thesis that whereas the negative theology of Pseudo-Dionysius entailed the complete unknowability of God as One beyond language, concept and being, Thomas developed a distinctly ‘positive apophaticism’ which transformed ‘Denys’ in the light of Augustine, Aristotle and especially Scripture itself. In this present dissertation I examine how Thomas’ approach to Scripture, particularly in the value he assigns to the ‘literal sense’ of Scripture, begins to reconfigure the hierarchical vision of the cosmos found in Pseudo-Dionysius. I argue that Thomas’ approach to the different senses of Scripture is both more comprehensive and rigorous than that of Pseudo-Dionysius and that it still offers a guiding light through the hermeneutical fog of contemporary theology with its dual challenges both from historical/critical methods and from deconstructive neo-kabbalistic approaches, culminating in the God without Being of Jean-Luc Marion whose silence, ‘precisely because it does not explain itself, exposes itself to an infinite equivocation of meaning.’

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Studia Patristica LXIV, Vol. 12, 2013

The Cherubikon, sung during the Great Entrance in the Byzantine Rite, has been discussed in a number of different ways in the literature – as a theatrical component of the Divine Liturgy (White, 2006 et al.), in terms of musicology (Raasted, 1986 et al.), and as a ‘synecdoche’ of the entire Eucharistic liturgy (Taft, 1995). This article seeks to discuss the Cherubikon in terms of how it is understood in Late Antiquity as describing the liturgical action as mystical experience. The text sung on regular Sundays refers to worshippers as ‘mystically representing’ (μυστικῶς εἰκονίζοντες) the Cherubim; the text for Thursday of Holy Week describes the Eucharist as ‘the mystical supper’ (τοῦ Δειπνοῦ τοῦ μυστικοῦ); and the text sung for the Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts on weekdays during Great Lent refers to the ‘mystical sacrifice’ (θυσία μυστική). Germanus of Constantinople’s eighth century commentary on the rite describes the hymn and the multisensory liturgical action as being a corporeal gloss on the spiritual reality they describe – the ‘mystical, living, and unbloody service’ (τῆς μυστικῆς καὶ ζωοθύτου καὶ ἀναιμάκτου λατρείας, 37.17-8) – in what Taft (ibid. 54) calls a ‘prolepsis’ of the whole Eucharistic action. Germanus uses the same Greek verb to describe the correspondence of the ritual event to the spiritual reality, εἰκονίζω, as the hymn itself uses to describe the relationship of the worshippers to the Cherubim; this is a term traceable to Neoplatonic authors, such as Plotinus, who uses the verb to describe the created order as ‘an image continuously being imaged’ (ὁ κόσμος εἰκὼν ἀεὶ εἰκονιζόμενος), Enneads II 3.18). The engagement with Neoplatonic mysticism is also demonstrable through the influence of Maximus the Confessor, whose Mystagogy Germanus quotes in his commentary (Meyendorff, 1984, 105-7). As understood by Late Antique authors such as Germanus, then, the Cherubikon’s use of μυστικῶς indicates a conception of the Byzantine Rite that maps onto Iamblichus’ three degrees of prayer – introductory, conjunctive, and ineffable unification (De mysteriis V 26), with the Liturgy of the Catechumens serving as the introductory stage, the Great Entrance the conjunctive stage, and the Eucharist itself as ineffable unification.

Archa Verbi 14, 2017

This essay revisits the oft-posed question of Dionysius’ reception in the middle ages, but with an eye toward a lesser known heir, Thomas Gallus. A Victorine abbot who left Paris for an outpost in Vercelli, Italy, Gallus was steeped in the thought of his forebears—viz., Hugh and Richard—and serves as an interesting representative of one reception tradition. Some aspects of this medieval Dionysianism have received scholarly attention, especially in regard to the medieval bifurcation between 'affective' and 'intellective' receptions of the Dionysian corpus. Gallus is regularly lined up alongside other twelfth and thirteenth century figures (usually Victorines and Franciscans) and, at times, their affective Dionysianism is set over against the intellective reading associated with Dominicans such as Albert and Thomas. In this essay, I revisit the question of this bifurcation by giving a more sustained look at the anthropological and metaphysical underpinnings of the affective interpretation. That is, Gallus’ treatment of mystical union is interpreted in light of his understanding of the human person as a knowing and loving subject and his understanding of the broader metaphysical relationship between God and creation. This approach to reading Gallus makes it possible to see that in positing loving ecstasy as the mode of union with the Divine 'above mind,' the affective tradition is not necessarily engaging in what has recently been called a "major transformation" of the Dionysian tradition. Rather, by showing how similar concerns appear within the original texts of Dionysius (and not merely in aberrant Latin translations thereof), I suggest concerns about apophasis and ecstatic, immediate, and erotic union which transcends intellection are not unique to Gallus.

Throughout the Middle Ages, the senses were conceived as part of a hierarchy of beings subject to the laws governing the created world; man was thus a reflection of the cosmos. Medieval diagrams of the microcosm link the stars, the four primary elements, and the seasons to the ages of man, his body parts, and his bodily humors. A figurative diagram of the microcosm in a twelfthcentury German manuscript ( .1) associates the five senses with the four primary elements. Based on Honorius of Autun's Elucidarium, the diagram solves the numerical disparity by relating sight to fire, hearing to the air of the upper firma ment, smell to the air of the lower firmament, taste to water, and touch to earth.1 The desire to inscribe the sensorium -the instrument of human experience -into a visionary notion of the universe governed by numerical and symmetrical harmony is exquisitely medieval and serves as the backdrop for a discussion of sensation in medieval culture.