MIGNE.APP

Patrologia Latina · Vol. 122 ·

DE EGRESSU ET REGRESSU ANIMAE AD DEUM

PL 122, coll. 1023–1024  ·  Latin from the Migne printing  ·  First English translation  ·  column numbers follow the original plates, not the Garnier reprint

John Scottus Eriugena

Joannes Scotus Erigena

c. 800 – c. 877

Irish scholar and master at the court of Charles the Bald, and the one Latin writer of his century who read Greek theology in Greek. He translated the Pseudo-Dionysius, Maximus the Confessor and Gregory of Nyssa into Latin, and out of them built his own system in the Periphyseon. His treatise on predestination was condemned in his lifetime and the Periphyseon long after it. His commentary on the Gospel of John survives only in fragments, from a single manuscript at Laon.

De egressu et regressu animae ad Deum

1023A. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Possident fluere et non stare. Ludus merito dictum est Dei a magistro, veluti per haec transducentis nos in ea, quae vere sunt, et nullo modo moventur.

Alia in idipsum theoria.

Si vero et nos ipsi secundum dominantem in praesenti nostrae naturae consequentiam tum quidem juxta similitudinem ceterorum in terra animalium nati, deinde pueri facti, deinde floris oximori Floss, var. lect. Corr., cod. ocimori c. glossa i. amigdali. Amigdalarum vero in vocabulario vetere theotisco interpretatio est mundalnuz. Cf. Graff Diut. II p. 43. instar juventute in horrorem vetustatis advenientis mortui, et ad aliam vitam translati, ludus dicti sumus Dei ab isto deifero magistro. Neque extra consequentiam. Ad futuram siquidem divinae veraeque vitae principalem formam praesens vita comparata 1023Bludus est, et omne, si quid aliud de hoc efficacius constitutum est. Ipse siquidem in epitaphio Floss, var. lect. Cod. ephitaphio. in Caesarium sui Floss, var. lect. Sic. cod.; f. suum? fratrem apertius ostendit, sic dicens: Talis vita nostra, fratres, viventium ad tempus, qualis in terra ludus. Non existentes efficimur, et facti resolvimur, somnium sumus instabile, volatus 1024Aavis transeuntis adhuc eo longius. Ad ipsam siquidem proprie divinarum rerum πρωτοτύπων, id est, principalium exemplorum veritatem praesentium visibiliumque rerum comparata dispositio, neque omnino esse aestimabitur his, qui viam carpere, quantum possibile est, ad divinae speciositatis formam digni facti sunt, sicut neque ludibrium verae cuipiam et existenti rei comparatum esse universaliter judicatur.

Alia in idipsum theoria.

Fortassis autem et transmutabile materialium rerum, quas commendamus, in aliam aliter transferentium et translatarum privationem, ac nullum habentium fundamentum praeter primam rationem, per 1024Bquam feruntur, sapienter provideque et ferunt, et, dum aestimantur a nobis teneri, perfugiunt magis, quam tenentur, et desiderium nostrum in se patiuntur teneri; magis vero nos ipsos utpote repulsos et tenere et teneri non valentium. Ponderatam quippe suae naturae definitionem Floss, var. lect. Cod. diffinitionem.. . . . .

On the Going-Forth and Return of the Soul to God

1023A. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . They possess flowing and not standing. It has deservedly been called the play of God by the teacher, as of one leading us across through these things into those which truly are, and are in no way moved.

Another theoria on the same.

But if we ourselves too, according to the sequence of our nature that prevails at present, at one time born after the likeness of the other animals on the earth, then made boys, then, like the flower of the oximori Corrected; the codex has ocimori, with the gloss, that is, amigdali. For amigdalarum an old German vocabulary gives the interpretation mundalnuz. Cf. Graff, Diut. II, p. 43., dead in youth into the horror of oncoming old age, and translated to another life, have been called the play of God by this God-bearing teacher. Nor is it outside the sequence. For the present life, compared with the future principal form of the divine and true life, 1023Bis play, and so is all, if anything else concerning this has been established more efficaciously. For he himself shows it more openly in the epitaph on Caesarius his brother, saying thus: Such is our life, brethren, of us who live for a time, as is play upon the earth. Not existing, we are made, and, having been made, we are dissolved, we are an unstable dream, the flight 1024Aof a passing bird, yet further than that. For the disposition of present and visible things, compared with the very truth, properly speaking, of the πρωτοτύπων of divine things, that is, of their principal exemplars, will not be reckoned to be at all by those who have been made worthy to take the way, as far as is possible, to the form of the divine beauty, just as neither is a plaything, compared with any true and existing thing, judged universally to be.

Another theoria on the same.

But perhaps also the changeable character of material things, which we commend, things that carry over and are carried over otherwise into another privation, and that have no foundation save the first reason, through 1024Bwhich they are borne, wisely and providently they both bear, and, while they are thought by us to be held, they flee away rather than are held, and suffer our desire to be held in them; but rather of those unable both to hold and to be held, us ourselves, as being repulsed. For the weighed definition of its nature. . . . .

On this text

Cruces for this work — where the plate is defective or the reading uncertain →

A fragment on the soul's going out from God and its return to him, in the Latin Eriugena made from the Greek of Maximus the Confessor. It begins and ends in the middle of the argument, and the gaps are marked with Floss's rows of dots. The apparatus at the foot of the Latin is Floss's, not Migne's: his Variae lectiones give the manuscript's reading where he printed something else, and are marked “Floss, var. lect.”