| Abstract [eng] |
De consolatione Philosophiae by Boetius (ca. 480–524) was recognised amidst the books, which King Alfred the Great of Wessex (ca. 849–99) thought ‘most necessary for all men to know’. As it is written in the Preface, King Alfred was the translator of this book and rendered it from Latin sometimes ‘word for word’, and sometimes ‘sense for sense’. In the Old English Boethius, there are different acting personae – in place of Lady Philosophy, there appears Heavenly Wisdom, who greets the mourning Boethius, personified by his own Mod. Heavenly Wisdom and leads Boetius from praxis to theoria. The article aims to reveal the reflection of the Dionysian hierarchy in the Old English Boethius. In the words of pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, hierarchy elevates its members to the perfection of the spotless mirror that only produces the reflection of primordial Light (Pseudo-Dionysius 1987b: 154). For pseudo-Dionysius, creation is a theophany of the Beauty of the Creator, and hierarchy is a theophany of His Love. Love descends through the great chain of being – proodos, and ascends through the multiplicity of symbols – epistrophê, so that plurality is restored into One – monê. |
