From Dionysiu's thearchia to Bonaventure's hierarchia. Assimilation and evolution of the concept

CRESTA, GERALD; LESLEY-ANNE DYER; JOHN SLOTEMAKER; JEFFREY WITT; JOOS VAN ROSSUM; YILUN CAI; ELIZABETH CLARK; KENNETH NOAKES; MANUELA GHEORGE; JASON RADCLIFF; ANDREW LENOX-LONYNGHAM

Studia Patristica

Peeters Publishers

Lugar: Leuven; Año: 2013; p. 325 - 332

In his Commentary on the Sentences, Bonaventure presents and discusses three definitions of hierarchia, given by Dionysius in Coelestis Hierarchia, but modified in the first the text of the areopagite. Referring to deity, Dionysius uses the term thearchia, without the intention of introducing a definition of the hierarchy uncreated to clarify the heavenly hierarchy. Buenaventura, on the other hand, seeks to link the entire universe of the hierarchies quotas to the hierarchy uncreated, as a further step forward towards the universalisation of concept on the basis of the ´analogies´ in the dionisian doctrine. This paper analyses the three definitions of bonaventurian hierarchia, with the intention of indicating the presence of Dionysius specifically in the conceptual structures of his egressus (divine image and likeness) and the regressus (fullness in the trinitarian unity), which form the heart of its spiritual and trinitarian theology.