Oldal 206 [206]
MONIKA FRAZER-IMREGH
1he idea of ranking or setting up an order of the steps of initiation comes
from Dionysius himself: in the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy he talks about peoples
initiation and defines three different steps or tasks which three different
ranks of the Church are supposed to have: "Ihe holy sacraments bring
about purification, illumination, and perfection. Ihe deacons form the order
which purifies. Ihe priests constitute the order which gives illumination.
And the hierarchs, living in conformity with God, make up the order which
perfects.” *° Consequently, according to the Areopagite’s teaching, for humans
there are three different levels of being initiated: “As for those who are being
purified, so long as they are still at this stage of purification they do not partake
of the sacred vision or communion. The sacred people is the contemplative
order. The order of those made perfect is that of the monks who live a single
minded-life.”*' The reason why Pico assumed the first heavenly order to be
structured by different ranks is the same as the following justification from
Dionysius: “Thus our own hierarchy is blessedly and harmoniously divided
into orders in accordance with divine revelation and therefore deploys the
same sequence as the hierarchies of heaven.”* This is contradictory to what
I discovered about the Celestial Hierarchy’s description, so it has to bea result
of his later thinking. However, his motivation in the next sentence makes him
the ideal authority for Ficino and Pico regarding initiations, because his view
is very close to the Corpus Hermeticum’s starting point: “as above, so below”:
“It carefully preserves in its own human way the characteristics which enable
it to be like God and conform to him.”
The same issue can also be found in Pico’s Heptaplus, especially in the
Fourth Exposition, in which he explains the nature of man, and in the Seventh
Exposition, where the topic is bliss, i.e. eternal life.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologiae, Christian Classics Ethereal Library,
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/summa.pdf
FiciNo, Marsilio, Lettere I. Epistolarium familiarium liber I, a cura di S.
GENTILE, Firenze, Olschki, 1990. English translation: Fic1No, The Letters,
Transl. A. Bertoluzzi and C. Saleman, 3 vol., London, Shepheard-Walwyn,
1975-81 (books 1%, 3’ and 4").
30 Pseudo-Dionysius, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, Chapter VI, III (Contemplation), 5, 536D. The
Complete Works, 248.
31 Ibidem.
32 Ibidem.
3 Tbidem, 537A.
+ 204 ¢
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