Page 206 [206]
OCR
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 ¢ Daréczi-Sepsi-Vassänyi_Initiation_155x240.indb 204 6 2020.06.15. 11:04:20
