Periphyseon
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An Irishman at the Frankish court reads Greek, translates Dionysius, and builds a philosophical theology so ambitious that later centuries condemned it.
- a fourfold division of nature as the structure of a whole theology
- Greek Christian sources opened to Latin readers by translation
- evil treated as privation rather than substance
- condemned centuries later for conclusions its own age tolerated
The Periphyseon divides nature into what creates and is not created, what creates and is created, what is created and does not create, and what neither creates nor is created, and works through the return of all things to their source. Eriugena's ability to read Greek was almost unique in the Latin west of his day, and his translations of Dionysius and Maximus opened that tradition to Latin readers. The work's monism and its treatment of evil as privation drew condemnation in the thirteenth century.
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