Iohannes Scottus Eriugena: Carmina, De imagine

Book

John Scottus Eriugena's Carminareflect not only his central philosophical and theological ideas, but also his literary education and his life at the court of Charles the Bald. This corpus of Eriugena's poetry includes recent discoveries of new items. Works laid under contribution by the poet have also been expanded.

De Imaginerepresents the Latin translation of Gregory of Nyssa's treatise on the creation of man (De opificio hominis), a text that had already attracted the attention of Dionysius Exiguus in the sixth century. Probably a juvenile work, it witnesses to Eriugena's interests for translating Greek texts and in this respect can be paralleled to major texts like the translation of Maximus the Confessor and of Dionysius the Areopagite. Moreover, large portions of the text were paraphrased or directly employed in the Periphyseon and, later on, were used by William of St Thierry in his De natura corporis et animae.

This new critical edition is based on the collation of the two extant manuscripts, compared against the Greek text, and is accompanied by a source apparatus that also highlights the reprises in Periphyseon and the parallel passages in De natura corporis. The introduction outlines the contents of the work, situating De imagine in Eriugena's speculation, and offers a thorough reconstruction of the manuscript tradition, which also includes the thorny question of the Greek exemplar employed by Eriugena.

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Brepols Publishers
• Series: Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis
• Series number: 167
• Place of publication: Turnhout
• Publication date: 2020-02-10
• ISBN-10: 2503551742
• ISBN-13: 9782503551746
• Language: English
• Keywords: SBTMR