We discuss further with Dr Gigineishvili, exploring the extraordinary intellectual scene of high-mediæval Georgia. We discuss Origenistic heresies in Petritsi's thought. We then turn to the importance of Petritsi's work for any future edition of Proclus' Elements.
We discuss the work of Ioane Petritsi (eleventh to twelfth centuries), a Georgian intellectual whose translation of, and commentary on, the Elements of Theology of Proclus is a historical anomaly in a number of ways. It turns out that everything in Proclus' metaphysics – even the henads – could and did make it through into a Christian work in twelfth-century Georgia. Come for the surprising story of a radical Georgian intellectual, stay for the Georgian origins of the medieval Christian saint, the Buddha.
We discuss the long, convoluted, and often tendentious reception of Proclus and Proclean ideas in the eastern Roman empire. From late-antique debates about the nature of being and participation, through medieval reappropriations of philosophy, through to the radical debates of Plethon and Scholarios in the final days of the empire, Proclus emerges as a curiously-persistent figure of many guises.
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