დიონისე არეოპაგელი და დანტე ალიგიერი

Abstract

Dante Alighieri’s “The Divine Comedy” cannot exist without Dionysius the Areopagite’s angelological doctrine, because the framework of the plot of “The Divine Comedy” is established on the foundations of his angelology. If its foundations were undermined, Alighieri’s heroes would fall down from the heavenly heights. It may lead us to the viewpoint (which, for its part, cannot be excluded,) that Dante’s great admiration for Dionysius the Areopagite and his doctrine of angels’ hierarchy, which is the bridge and the path towards the God, his Christian ethical view of a human being turning into an angel, and finally Dante’s own faith in his beloved Beatrice’s divinity, inspired the poet to create the heavenly plot of his “Divine Comedy”. It seems as if the deepest love and admiration of great fathers of the Georgian Orthodox Church for Paul the Apostle turned to Dionysius the Areopagite, the Apostle Paul’s first follower, one of the wise men of Areopagus – the Supreme Court of Greece. The European scientists, based on scientific research that lasted for centuries, discovered the so-called “Corpus Aeropagiticum” known from the 6th Century and proved that Dionysius the Areopagite was only a pseudonym of the secretive author of the “Corpus Aeropagiticum”. Only in the 20th century two Academicians: Georgian Shalva Nutsubidze and Belgian Ernest Honigmann proved independently that in reality the author of the work was Peter the Iberian, one of the renowned great fathers of the Christian Church in the Byzantine Empire, a hostage, sent to Constantinople as Georgia’s sign of faithfulness, the Prince of Georgia who secretly left the Imperial Court and became a monk.