From the preface by Andrew Hicks:
The present volume, the latest and perhaps last installment of the intermittent Opera fere omnia Iohannis Scotti seu Eriugenae, brings together two works that inhabit very different spheres of Eriugenian thought: the Latin translation of Gregory of Nyssa's fourth-century Greek treatise on theological anthropology, the Περὶ κατασκευῆς ἀνθρώπου or De opificio hominis (On the Creation of Man), entitled De imagine in Eriugena's translation (ed. Giovanni Mandolino; introductionem criticam praemisit Chiara O. Tommasi), and his poetic corpus, composed almost exclusively for Charles the Bald and his royal court, celebrating both high occasions, such as Easter or political triumph, and the less elevated pleasures of his friends and drinking brothers (ed. Michael W. Herren, adiuuante Andrew Dunning).
In the De imagine we see Eriugena the translator "at work" forging an influential theological and philosophical Latin vocabulary and engaging with an author whose work was cited in the Periphyseon more often than any other Greek patristic writer. In the Carmina we see Eriugena the poet "at play" composing occasional verses that both repaid his debts to his patron and provided him the opportunity "to speak publicly to the powers that ran his world."
In both we see what could be called the hallmarks of Eriugena's intellectual and literary style: the creative, sometimes strained, but always dazzling synthesis of the linguistic and conceptual realms of Greek and Latin; and the encounter between ancient (and late-ancient) philosophical traditions of a perennial Platonism and the Christian theological debates and political complexities of the Carolingian court.
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