Una Via Negativa

[boccaderlupo]

In the Primum Mobile of the Paradiso, Dante observes the orders of angels, which correspond to the various spheres. This derives from Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, an early Christian writer and another current of Neoplatonism feeding into the Commedia.

As noted in this essay, although some regard Pseudo-Dionysius as a "crypto pagan," the takeaway for me is that, regardless, his work represents yet another point of contact between Platonic and Neoplatonic thought and Christian mysticism. With Dante's explicit call-out to him, it further represents, as with the reference to Timaeus noted earlier, additional correspondences extending into the poem.

Worth reflecting on the fact, too, that Dionysus employs the term "eros" in relation to God, and for certain accounts of the early universe, Eros is among the primal divinities, and may indeed be the one that gets things rolling (see Hesiod, Parmenides, Aristophanes).

In addition to the angelology, there are interesting parallels between Pseudo-Dionysius's approach to God and Dante's encounter, which is recounted in the final canto of the poem. Consider (from the Mystical Theology):

"For the higher we soar in contemplation the more limited become our expressions of that which is purely intelligible; even as now, when plunging into the Darkness that is above the intellect, we pass not merely into brevity of speech, but even into absolute silence of thoughts and of words."

It can be convincingly argued that Dante's conception of God, much like that of St. Augustine's, as noted by Roger Theodore Lafferty, "was no longer the superman Jahveh [Jehovah/YHVH] of the early Hebrew mind. He had become a great first principle." In effect, then, a synthesis between Ancient Greek thought and that of that nascent mystery religion, Christianity.