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John Scotus Eriugena

Eriugena

CarolingianNeoplatonistLatin

The boldest Latin Neoplatonist of the early Middle Ages, translator of Pseudo-Dionysius.

John Scotus Eriugena (c. 815–877) was the most original mind of the Carolingian age — an Irish scholar who translated Pseudo-Dionysius into Latin and absorbed his Neoplatonic theology.

His great work, the Periphyseon (On the Division of Nature), describes all reality as a procession from and return to God in the manner of Proclus — a vision so daring it was later condemned, yet it kept the Neoplatonic current alive in the Latin West.

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