Connor Ritchie

This essay compares how John Scottus Eriugena and thinkers associated with what has been called the ‘Medieval Dionysian Affective Tradition’ interpret the role of love in mystical union according to the works of Dionysius the Areopagite. At stake are two issues that challenge commonly held assumptions about Eriugena’s work. First, Eriugena is generally regarded as an intellectualist whose works lack emphasis on the role of love in how the human mind comes to know God. As this essay claims, scholars consistently overlook that in the Periphyseon Eriugena understands that love plays a key role in mystical union by perfecting human knowledge of God. Second, although Eriugena was the first to translate the complete Corpus Dionysiacum and interpret its ideas for a Latin audience, scholars typically do not regard him as a contributor to the Medieval Dionysian Affective Tradition. According to this essay, Eriugena anticipates this tradition of interpreting the Corpus Dionysiacum insofar as his emphasis on the role of love in mystical union draws from Dionysius and integrates his ideas with those of Latin authors, particularly Augustine. Crucially, however, unlike later interpreters of Dionysius, Eriugena does not consider love to be a higher mode of cognition than other forms of knowing and that mystical union requires transgressing both knowledge and love.

The central concern of this essay is to investigate how Eriugena’s Carmina—his collected works of poetry—may contribute to scholarship on his Christology by focusing on how it recounts Christ suffering and shedding his blood on the cross. To begin, the first part of this essay reviews recent scholarship of Eriugena’s Christology and how he understands the nature of the Incarnation in his magnum opus the Periphyseon. Then, the second part explains how scholars consistently overlook and undervalue the theological themes of Eriugena’s Carmina. Against such readings of Eriugena’s poems, this essay defends their theological merit. Finally, the third part closely examines several of the major poems in Eriugena’s Carmina that detail Christ’s passion and his bloodshed. Ultimately, this essay argues that Eriugena’s Carmina contributes in a unique way to his understanding of the Incarnation by offering a visceral account of how Jesus Christ suffered on the cross and shed his blood for the sake of human redemption.

The central concern of this paper is to explore how Jean-Luc Marion and John Scottus Eriugena approach the incomprehensibility of divine revelation in complementary ways. First, this paper explains how both thinkers understand revelation and rely on negative theology to approach its incomprehensibility. Then, it discusses whether the differences between their terminologies and methodologies amount to two distinctly different accounts of revelation that entail separate understandings of how the incomprehensibility of revelation may be spoken of and known in some way. At stake are two issues: first, whether Eriugena provides a phenomenality of revelation that Marion desires; second, whether Eriugena supports Marion’s claim of retrieving the patristic notion of revelation. Finally, this paper concludes by showing that Eriugena appears in how Marion’s notion of negative theology appropriates Dionysian themes. For both, the incomprehensible nature of revelation is best approached through what this paper calls a ‘refined’ apophasis that stays true to Dionysian negative theology.

This paper advocates for a reading of John Scottus Eriugena’s Carmina that situates his collection of poems within the genre of devotional poetry. Although the Carmina has recently benefited from scholarship on Eriugena’s theology, typologies of his poems consistently overlook the significance of their theological themes. Most instead attribute more significance to their political themes, since Charles the Bald commissioned many of Eriugena’s poems for special occasions at his royal court. This paper argues that a textual analysis which compares the significance of theological and political themes in the Carmina reveals several reasons why Eriugena’s poems should be read as devotional poetry. First, it explains how typologies of Eriugena’s poems overlook the significance of their theological themes by overstating the significance of Charles and his royal court. Then, it offers a close reading of three poems in the Carmina to show how Eriugena uses theological themes to frame political ones.