Academic literature on the topic 'Neoplatonism in hymns'

AbstractThe paper deals with an anonymous Hymn to God, which is attributed to Gregory of Nazianzus by some authors, but was most probably composed by a Christian Neoplatonist such as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. The paper explores the hymn’s relation to Neoplatonic theories of prayer and shows that these affinities are broader in scope than has previously been recognised. Some Pagan and Christian Neoplatonists, including the author of the Hymn to God, seem to have shared the idea of a cosmic prayer by which all beings tend towards God, a prayer founded on the knowledge of the ‘signatures’ (synthemata) that God rooted in our souls.

The present paper consists of the introduction to the Neoplatonic and Chaldean systems, the first Polish translation of seven extant Hymns by Proclus (AD 412- 485), and the commentaries on each of them. This essay is a polemic against the well-known book by R.M. Van den Berg entitled Proclus’ Hymns (Leiden 2001, Brill), which shows, above all, the Chaldean influences (cf. The Chaldean Oracles, ed. R. Majercik, Leiden 1989, Brill). I has argued that the philosopher used much more literary patterns than the Chaldean Oracles to illustrate the Neoplatonic „oecumenism” (an expression of P. Athanassiadi), i.e. syncretism of all the late-pa­gan religions. I has argued, further, that the philosopher’s cult-songs had been used in purifications and mystery rites of all the religions, but there is no evidence for the theurgy alone. I disagree with M. Van den Berg in the main thesis of his book that the gods to whom the hymns were adressed should be identified with the lead­er-gods of Proclus’ system. My argumentation leads to the conclusion that the gods of Proclus’ Hymns can be identified with the Great Demiurges (Hymns 2, 6, 7) and the Lesser Demiurges (Hymns 1, 3, 4, 5). The elaborate theological system con­structed by Proclus and the location of gods from the Hymns in it are shown in the special diagram (table 1).

Abstract The idea that mythos and logos are incompatible, and that truth is a product of scientific and dialectical thinking, was certainly disproven by later Platonic philosophers. Deploying the works of Hesiod and Homer, Homeric Hymns and other such literature, they considered myth a valuable and significant augment to philosophical discourse. Plato’s denigration of myth gave his followers an incentive to read myth as allegory. The Stoics and first-century philosophers such as Philo, treated allegory as a legitimate interpretive strategy. The Middle Platonists incorporated myth, for example, deifying the Monad and Dyad, as did 2nd century Platonists. Plutarch’s Isis and Osiris (2nd century CE), for example, equates Isis and Osiris with form and matter: the god (Osiris) sows in matter (Isis) logoi (forms or ideas) from himself (De Iside. 372F). Porphyry’s allegorizing of Plato’s Cave of the Nymphs is another example. Plotinus is a strong influence on how the late Neoplatonists regarded myth. This paper argues that these philosophers’ use of allegory prepared the way for the Neoplatonists treatment of myth as inspired symbolism. Proclus and Syrianus, as reported by Hermias, did something more extreme by using mythology to construct inspired symbolic argument. Mythos becomes another type of logos, a vehicle for representing the invisible world of being, another kind of truth that can even serve a function in anagogic ascent.

The study of the peculiarities that the reception of such an essential concept of the philosophical Corpus Dionysiacum Areopagiticum as ὑπερούσιος in ancient Slavic translations has is promising. It allows not only to understand better the internal perspective of the development of philosophical terminology in Rus’-Ukraine, where in the 15th–17th centuries, there existed a significant number of manuscripts of the corpus, but also to strengthen the argument in favor of its dating precisely in the 5th century. According to the conceptual features that are present in the Greek text of De divinis nominibus and are confirmed in the studies of Slavic translations of the Corpus Areopagiticum, this work, preserved also in other languages, could belong to an author, who uniquely combined his Christian views and a philosophical vision of the world that was inspired by his Neoplatonic education at the Alexandrian School of Philosophy under the guidance of the eminent Neoplatonic thinker and mathematician Hypatia, who was well acquainted with the ideas of Plotinus and the whole Alexandrian intellectual tradition. It is possible that this author, who used the ideas of Plotinus and Porphyry and for the first time unfolded the idea of the Christian God as the Hyperousios in the aspect of the Christian Triad in his philosophical hymns and treatises, could be Synesius of Cyrene, Bishop of Ptolemais.

AbstractIn De Mysteriis VIII Iamblichus gives two orderings of first principles, one in purely Neoplatonic terms drawn from his own philosophical system, and the other in the form of several Egyptian gods, glossed with Neoplatonic language again taken from his own system. The first ordering or taxis includes the Simple One and the One Existent, two of the elements of Iamblichus' realm of the One. The second taxis includes the Egyptian (H)eikton, which has now been identified with the god of magic, Heka, glossed as the One Existent. The Egyptian god Kmeph is also a member of this taxis, and is the Egyptian Kematef, a god of creation associated with the solar Amun-Re. Iamblichus refers to this god also as the Hegemon of the celestial gods, which should be equated to Helios, specifically the noeric Helios as described by Julian in his Hymn to Helios. Iamblichus describes Kmeph as an “intellect knowing himself”, and so the noeric Kmeph/Helios should also be seen as the Paternal Demiurgic Zeus, explicitly described also by Proclus as an intellect knowing himself. This notion of a self-thinking intellect may offer a solution to the problematic formulation by Proclus in his Timaeus commentary of Iamblichus' view of the Demiurgy encompassing all the noeric realm. The identification of Kmeph as the noeric Helios now also allows the first direct parallels to de Mysteriis to be found in extant Hermetica. In addition it can be inferred from the specific Neoplatonic terminology employed that the noetic Father of Demiurges, Kronos, appears, as well as the secondary Demiurgic triad of Zeus, Poseidon, and Pluto, in the forms of the Egyptian Amun, Ptah, and Osiris, thus raising the question that much of the theology documented only in Proclus might appear already to have been established by Iamblichus.

Almost everything we know of Michael Marullus – Greek exile, Neoplatonist, mercenary soldier – is mediated by his poetry, much of which seems positively to invite biographical decoding. The poet tells us he was conceived in the year Constantinople fell to the Turks (1453), after which his family fled, via Ragusa (modern Dubrovnik), to Italy. Here he grew up under the Iliadae … tecta Remi (Siena?), received an excellent education, and from an early age was frequenting the humanist academy of Giovanni Pontano at Naples. Marullus reports that when just seventeen, fate tore him away from his studies and plunged him into a military career (Epig. 2.32.71–3). Between wars, both abroad and within Italy, he composed Latin poetry – including four books of controversial ‘pagan’ hymns –, edited Lucretius, and fraternised with such prominent figures in the literary and intellectual culture of the day as Jacopo Sannazaro and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Severed from an eventful life by a fittingly dramatic death, Marullus drowned in an attempt to cross the river Cecina in full flood. His poetic talents were much appreciated in his own time, for example by Leonardo Da Vinci and Thomas More. The love lyrics to ‘Neaera’, though perhaps stiff and conventional to modern taste, inspired Ronsard. His untimely death drew Latin epitaphs from all over Italy.

ABSTRACT: The Emperor Julian and Heliodorus, the author of the Aethiopica , both claimed descent from Helios, the supreme god of Neoplatonic philosophy in Late Antiquity, to whom many of Julian's ancestors, most notably Constantius Chlorus, also professed devotion. In his Hymn to King Helios , the emperor claimed to have private proofs of this that he did not wish to make public, but which appear to have had nothing to do with the taboo on divulging the mysteries of Mithras. There is a wide range of suggestive evidence in the historical record, from the hostile post-mortem testimony of Gregory of Nazianzus, to the anonymous slurs of the people of Antioch, the adulation of his own uneducated troops, and the coinage issued during his reign, that points to some genetic abnormality in his physical nature, most probably a form of albinism (an unknown condition at the time), which the emperor took as proof of the supernatural guidance of Helios in his life.

В статье обсуждаются доктринальные аспекты речи апостола Петра из апокрифического «Мученичества апостола Петра» (МП). Посредством анализа схожих концепций поздней античности и раннего христианства проясняется смысл центрального тезиса МП о том, что Богу следует приносить благодарение (εὐχαριστία) не телесным образом, но «посредством безмолвия». Приводятся параллели к учению о безмолвном гимне и молитве из гностицизма, герметизма, неоплатонизма. Обсуждается возможный смысл формулы «глас Божий (ἦχος τοῦ θεοῦ)», приложенный к Богу Слову. Речь Петра на кресте помещена в контекст позднеантичных трактатов о бестелесной жертве: как один из возможных источников МП указан фрагмент из трактата Аполлония Тианского «О жертвоприношениях». Рассматриваются формула ὁ ἐπὶ πᾶσι θεός («бог, который над всеми») у Аполлония Тианского, Порфирия и Оригена, а также взгляды Порфирия и Ямвлиха относительно иерархии жертвоприношений. Указано на мистериальный и мистический характер речи Петра, противопоставляющей внутреннее и внешнее (ἐν τῷ κρυπτῷ / ἐν φανερῷ), умное и телесное, видимое и невидимое. Завершение речи Петра в МП рассматривается как «гимн восстановления»; в этой связи обсуждается его герметический контекст. The essay discusses the doctrinal aspects of Peter’s sermon from the apocryphal (MP). The meaning of MP’s statement that God should be offered sacrifice (εὐχαριστία) not in a corporeal way, but “through silence” is clarified through the analysis of similar concepts of Late Antiquity and early Christianity. Parallels to the theory of silent hymn / praise from Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Neoplatonism are indicated. The possible meaning of the formula “the voice of God” (ἦχος τοῦ θεοῦ) applied to God the Word is discussed. Peter’s speech on the cross is placed in the context of Late Antique treatises on incorporeal sacrifice: as one of the possible sources of the MP here, a fragment from Apollonius of Tyana’s is indicated. The formula ὁ ἐπὶ πᾶσι θεός (“the god who is over all”) used by Apollonius of Tyana, Porphyry and Origen is discussed, as well as the views of Porphyry and Iamblichus concerning the hierarchy of sacrifices. The mysterial and mystical nature of Peter’s sermon is pointed out, contrasting the internal and the external (ἐν τῷκρυπτῷ / ἐν φανερῷ), intelligent and bodily, visible and invisible. The conclusion of Peter’s speech in the MP is shown to resemble the secret hymn from Hermetic “Speech on regeneration and silence” ( xiii).

Статья посвящена выявлению источников учения, которое Симеон Новый Богослов, мистик конца x — начала xi вв., приписывает своим оппонентам в 1-м гимне. Элементы этого учения следующие: (1) бытие имеет трехчастную структуру; (2) душа после смерти сохраняет какой-то элемент земного, материальнотелесного естества; (3) свое восхождение к Богу она совершает только после смерти; (4) это движение имеет свой предел — душа останавливается посередине пути между тьмой и светом, будучи не способна преодолеть «бездну», пролегающую между небесным и земным мирами. На взгляд автора, все элементы этого учения содержатся в двух актуальных для конца x — начала xi вв. толкованиях на 158-й фрагмент «Халдейских оракулов»: толковании Синезия Киренского — она обнаруживается в трактате «О сновидениях»; а также в комментариях Михаила Пселла на указанный среднеплатонический текст, которые отражают более раннюю неоплатоническую экзегетическую традицию. Симеон Новый Богослов воспроизводит учение комментаторов, во-первых, в карикатурном виде, искажая и упрощая его, а во-вторых, переводит это учение на язык христианской догматики. В конечном итоге мистик использует неоплатонический материал для конструирования собственного образно-понятийного ряда. The paper aims to identify the sources of the teaching that Symeon the New Theologian, a mystic of the late tenth – early eleventh centuries, attributes, in his Hymn 1, to his opponents. The elements of this teaching are as follows: (1) being has a three-partite structure; (2) soul retains some element of the earthly, material and bodily nature after death; (3) it makes its ascent to God only after death; (4) this movement has its limit — the soul stops in the middle of the path between darkness and light, being unable to overcome the “abyss” that is between the heavenly and earthly worlds. The author argues that all the elements of this teaching are contained in two interpretations of the 158th fragment of the Chaldean Oracles relevant to the late tenth – early eleventh centuries: the interpretation of Synesius of Cyrene — it is found in his treatise On Dreams; and in Michael Psellos’ commentary on the above mentioned Middle Platonic text, which reflect the earlier Neoplatonic exegetical tradition. Symeon the New Theologian reproduces the teaching of the commentators, firstly, in caricature, distorting and simplifying it, and secondly, translates this teaching into the language of Christian dogma. Ultimately, the mystic uses Neoplatonic material to construct his own figurative and conceptual set.

De 1549 à 1584, Ronsard écrit des hymnes d’une grande variété formelle et thématique. Le poète y développe des récits mythologiques ou allégoriques, évoque les guerres contemporaines, pratique l’éloge, tout en respectant une posture d’orant qui tente de restaurer les liens entre humanité et divinité. Ce simple constat peut justifier de réfléchir sur les hymnes à partir du couple notionnel « opposition et conciliation ». Notre étude, fondée sur des analyses narratologiques, stylistiques et rhétoriques, vise à comprendre comment la poétique du conflit contribue à rendre compte de la conception de l’univers de Ronsard, et plus spécifiquement de la place qu’il accorde à l’activité poétique dans l’appréhension des mystères des relations de l’humanité avec le divin. Nous suivons un fil thématique qui conduit progressivement à une réflexion sur le discours philosophique, la pragmatique, et la dimension métapoétique des hymnes. Ce parcours nous conduit à évaluer si cette poétique du conflit peut constituer un trait définitoire du genre au sein du corpus disparate des hymnes ronsardiens. Nous nous intéressons d’abord à la représentation des tensions constitutives d’un univers fondé sur la concordia discors : celle-ci met en évidence le mystère d’un cosmos harmonieux malgré les forces contradictoires qui l’animent et pourraient en provoquer la destruction. La force ou la violence, mais aussi la parole ou l’art, semblent capables d’y maintenir l’ordre. Nous étudions ensuite les évocations bien plus ambivalentes des conflits terrestres. Ils peuvent dévoiler les qualités des combattants, mais ils s’apparentent aussi profondément au « Discord », le désordre qui mine l’harmonie cosmique. Ainsi, les rapports de force sur terre révèlent l’imperfection fondamentale d’une humanité en qui s’opposent la matière et l’esprit. La troisième partie réfléchit à la pragmatique de l’hymne, qui vise à obtenir une action divine bénéfique en retour de l’énonciation du poème. En ce sens, le choix du genre hymnique souligne la confiance accordée par le poète à la parole ; celui-ci s’accorde d’ailleurs un rôle d’intermédiaire essentiel entre humanité et divinité. En effet, les prières cherchent à protéger les bénéficiaires de toutes sortes de maux qui font ressentir à l’homme dans son corps la lutte entre la chair et l’esprit, c’est-à-dire, dans une perspective chrétienne influencée par le néoplatonisme, la tension entre la tentation de la chute dans la matière et l’élévation vers le divin. La quatrième partie poursuit la réflexion sur la représentation de l’opposition entre l’esprit et la matière : cet antagonisme se traduit notamment par des récits mythologiques mettant en scène des personnages placés dans une position intermédiaire entre terre et ciel, qui ont l’audace de vouloir combler cet espace. Le questionne-ment sur la fonction conciliatrice de la parole est central dans ces récits, qui paraissent en outre faire signe vers l’aristotélisme pour résoudre la tension entre matière et esprit intrinsèque à la condition humaine. Le poète s’inclut parmi ces figures audacieuses : il semble donc légitime de rechercher dans la poétique des hymnes la trace d’une réflexion sur la possibilité, pour l’hymnographe, de s’accomplir au sens aristotélicien. Ronsard peut-il « inventer », au sens rhétorique du terme, ce langage tout puissant capable de communiquer avec le divin ? Nous tentons de répondre à cette question dans la dernière partie. Pour cela, nous y étudions en particulier l’énonciation afin de définir en quoi les pièces de notre corpus pour-raient être trace de la quête de cette voie/x apte à réconcilier l’homme avec le divin
From 1549 to 1584, Ronsard wrote hymns of great formal and thematic variety. The poet develops mythological or allegorical narratives, evokes contemporary wars, composes panegyrics, all the while maintaining the posture of an orator attempting to restore the links between humanity and divinity. This simple observation may justify thinking about hymns in terms of the notional couple “opposition and conciliation”. Our study, based on narratological, stylistic and rhetorical analyses, aims to understand how the poetics of conflict helps to account for Ronsard's conception of the universe, and more specifically the place he accords to poetic activity in apprehending the mysteries of humanity's relationship with the divine. We begin by following a thematic thread that gradually leads to a reflection on philosophi-cal discourse, pragmatics and the metapoetic dimension of hymns. This path leads us to assess whether this poetics of conflict can constitute a defining feature of the genre within the disparate corpus of Ronsardian hymns. First, we examine the representation of the tensions that provide the base of a universe founded on concordia discors. This highlights the mys-tery of a harmonious cosmos, in spite of the contradictory forces that animate it and could bring its destruction about. Force or violence, but also speech and art, seem to be able of maintaining order. We then study the far more ambivalent evocations of earthly conflicts. They may reveal the qualities of the combatants, but are also deeply akin to “Discord”, the disorder that undermines cosmic harmony. The power struggles on earth reveal the funda-mental imperfection of a humanity in which matter and spirit are seemingly opposite. The third part reflects on the pragmatics of the hymn, which aims to obtain beneficial divine actions in return for the utterance of the poem. Accordingly, the poet's confidence in the spoken word is underlined by the choice of the hymnal genre. He incidentally grants himself the role of an essential intermediary between humanity and divinity. Indeed, the prayers seek to protect the recipients from all manner of evils that make man feel in his body the struggle between flesh and spirit, i.e., in a Christian perspective influenced by Neoplato-nism, the tension between the temptation to fall into matter and the elevation to the divine. The fourth part continues the reflection on the representation of the opposition between spirit and matter: this antagonism is reflected in mythological tales featuring characters placed in an intermediary position between earth and sky, who have the audacity to try to bridge this gap. The investigations around the conciliatory power of speech are central to these tales, which also seem to point to Aristotelianism as a means of resolving the intrinsically human tension between matter and spirit. The poet can be considered as one of these daring characters. Therefore, it seems legitimate to seek in the poetics of the hymns the trace of a reflection on the possibility, for the hymnographer, of self-fulfillment in the Aristotelian sense. Can Ronsard “invent”, in the rhetorical sense of the term, that all-powerful language capable of communicating with the divine? We attempt to answer this question in the final section. In particular, we study enunciation in order to define how the pieces in our corpus could be a trace of the quest for a voice capable of words that reconcile man with the divine

Bringing together leading scholars from philosophy, architecture, history, classics, and art history, this volume asks: what are the key concepts in Neoplatonic aesthetics? And what impact has Neoplatonic philosophy had on the arts since the 3rd century CE? Organized into three parts, in part I four authors examine the theory behind Neoplatonic aesthetics, including in particular the philosophy of beauty, ornament, and the artistic imagination. Based on the thought of Plato, Neoplatonism incorporated influences from Aristotle, Stoicism, and a variety of other philosophical traditions to create a unique school of thought within the Western canon. The second part explores the influence of Neoplatonic thought on the painting, architecture, and music of classical, medieval, and Renaissance Europe. With chapters on Byzantine hymns, the birth of the Gothic, and Vasari'sSaint Michael, the authors bring to life the Neoplatonic influence on European culture and thinking. Finally, part III uncovers the impact of Neoplatonism right up to the modern day through a range of 19th- and 20th-century artistic case studies, from Kandinsky and Malevich to literature, music and world cinema. Unique in its interdisciplinary breadth, historical coverage, and combination of theory and application,The Legacy of Neoplatonic Philosophyprovides a fresh insight into the enduring influence of Neoplatonic thought on the arts of the Western world.

The first chapter begins with a general introduction to the topic of Orphic legend, ritual, and literature, along with the history of scholarship on Orphism, and the methods to be employed in this book for the study of four Orphic theogonies: Derveni, Eudemian, Hieronyman, and Rhapsodic. In the second section, the Orphic theogonies are placed in the wider context of ancient Near Eastern and Greek theogonic narratives. The third section analyzes the generic distinctions between theogonies and hymns and argues that Orphic theogonies have features of both, suggesting that the term “theogonic hymn” is the best way of describing their generic function. The fourth section argues that Orphic theogonies were a meeting point between the discourses of myth and philosophy. Some fragments of Orphic poetry appear to contain philosophical ideas, while prose philosophers, from the Presocratics to the Neoplatonists, regularly referred to Orphic poems.

Abstract In his ‘translator’s preface’, Settembrini warns readers about the obscenity of the upcoming tale and criticizes modern hypocrisy: ‘Platonic love’ was invented to hide affairs between men. In ch. 1, two boys (true ‘neoplatonists’, i.e. young followers of Plato) grow up loving each other. In ch. 2 they teach their Platonic teacher a lesson in equality and reciprocity—in a hilarious scene of sexe à trois; then meet the lovely Hymnis, discover heterosexuality (ch. 3), learn more about her (ch. 4), and about how to pleasure a woman without demanding what ‘brings no advantage to her’ (ch. 5). In ch. 6, Hymnis bids farewell to them and one boy falls in love with another girl. In ch. 7, both demonstrate their valour in war. In ch. 8, they get married, ‘love and honour’ their wives, while continuing to love each other and have sex together, in a lifelong bisexual arrangement.

After introducing general matters concerning the Rhapsodies in the first section, this chapter questions in the second section Radcliffe Edmonds’ argument that the Rhapsodies were not a continuous Rhapsodic theogony but a Rhapsodic collection of separate poems, and finds evidence for both points of view, but concludes that the collection must have contained a Rhapsodic narrative. Thus, the following sections discuss this theogonic narrative episode by episode, attempting to disentangle a reconstruction of the narrative from the allegories applied to the text by the Neoplatonists who preserved these fragments. This includes a discussion of the presentation of Chronos and Phanes as preserved by the Neoplatonists, the question of whether there was one Night or three in the Rhapsodies, the Rhapsodic version of the core succession myth, and the episode of Zeus swallowing Phanes, which includes the Rhapsodic version of the Orphic Hymn to Zeus.

The third chapter is about a theogony that had been known to the philosopher Eudemus (fourth century BC), and all of the other fragments that modern scholars have associated with this theogony. The Neoplatonist Damascius (fifth century AD) says that the theogony started with Night, but modern scholars have tried to link this to other early fragments of Orphic poetry. This chapter discusses Aristophanes in the first section, and Plato and Aristotle in the second section, arguing that their scattered references to Orphic poems might not have been from the same theogony. The third section introduces the Orphic Hymn(s) to Zeus that appear in different variations, the earliest of which are from around the same time as these other fragments. The fourth section suggests that early Orphic fragments about Demeter and Dionysus are not from the Eudemian theogony.