Seite 204 [204]
OCR
MONIKA FRAZER-IMREGH De amore (the Banguet commentary) concludes with this idea. Pico knew the book very well, well enough, indeed that he disputed some of Ficino’s points in his Commentary on Benivieni’s Canzona damore.”° Pseudo-Dionysius does not assume any difference of rank among the first circle of angels: seraph, cherub, and thrones,”' but Pico does. So on the highest level of the angels, that is on the seraph’s level, we have to become the source of this light, which is fire. Why is the fire the highest? This question is raised frequently in Platonic and Neoplatonic works. Plato, Plotinus, and Proclus discuss it in several treatises. Pico also covers this topic from a Platonic perspective in his Commentary on Benivieni’s Canzona d’amore. Fire, like the sun, gives heat, light, and life in the material world, and that is why it can be a symbol of love in spirituality as the closest thing to God, so close to him that it seems to be connected to and one with him. As I mentioned, Pico depicts a definite hierarchy of angels in which the thrones are the lowest, the cherubim are in the middle as the transmitters of God’s light, and the seraphim are the highest as fire or love itself: “Whoever is a Seraph, that is a lover, is in God and God is in him; even, it may be said, God and he are one”? If one looks at Pseudo-Dionysius’ Celestial Hierarchy, Chapter VII, in which he explains the meaning of the term seraph on the basis of the Hebrew word for burn, saraf, one finds the elements of Pico’s description: “For the designation seraphim really teaches this—a perennial circling around the divine things, penetrating warmth, the overflowing heat of a movement which never falters and never fails, a capacity to stamp their own image on subordinates by arousing and uplifting in them too a like flame, the same warmth. It means also the power to purify by means of the lightning flash and the flame. It means the ability to hold unveiled and undiminished both the light they have and the-illumination they give out. It means the capacity to push aside and to do away with every obscuring shadow.” # Surely Pico also remembered Aquinas’ explanation of Pseudo-Dionysius’ definition of the seraph in Summa Theologiae,** because he quotes him 20 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, A Platonick Discours upon Love, translated by D. B. Updike, edited by Edmund Gardner, London, Grant Richards Ltd., 1914. Kindle ed.: 2010. The Latin original is published among his other works in the above cited: Pico Della Mirandola, De hominis dignitate, 458-556. “They constitute an entirely uniform hierarchy.” Celestial Hierarchy, VU, 1; 208B, 163. Caponigri’s translation. “Qui Saraph, idest amator est, in Deo est, et Deus in eo, immo et Deus et ipse unum sunt.” Pico Della Mirandola, De hominis dignitate, 110. # Pseudo-Dionysius, The Complete Works, translated by Colm Luibheid, New York-Mahwah, Paulist Press, 1987. Celestial Hierarchy, VII, 1; 205C, 162. “The name ‘Seraphim’ does not come from charity only, but from the excess of charity, expressed by the word ardor or fire. Hence Dionysius (Coel. Hier. vii) expounds the name ‘Seraphim’ according to the properties of fire, containing an excess of heat. Now in fire we may consider three things. First, the movement which is upwards and continuous. This signifies that they are borne inflexibly towards God. Secondly, the active force which 21 22 24 + 202 + Daréczi-Sepsi-Vassänyi_Initiation_155x240.indb 202 6 2020.06.15. 11:04:20
