Language of Ioane Petritsi (Damana Melikishvili, 2013)

(Published in the Journal of Kartvelological Studies)

A Great medieval philosopher-theologian Ioane Petritsi, “the Platonic philosopher”, as manuscript glosses name him, is a representative of a new stage in the history of Christian thought. Study of his literary heritage has an immense importance for understanding the tendencies and specifics of development of medieval philosophy and theology not only inGeorgiabut in the Eastern Christendom in general. This study will also help to establish and shed light on the relationship between Eastern and Western Christian philosophy and theology.

The list of textbooks utilized in Gelati theological-literary school, conventionally called Gelati Academy (12^th-13^th  centuries), that is a Georgian analogue of the Constantinopolitan Mangana University, consists of Neo-Platonist literature and textbooks on the free arts – the trivium and quadrivium – similar to those that were widely used also in medieval European educational centers. On the basis of translation of those works the formal-semantic system of Georgian philosophical terminology was elaborated and established through the efforts of Eprem Mtsire, Arsen Iqaltoeli and Ioane Petritsi. Ioane Petritsi introduced among the compendia of the Gelati Academy the “Elements of Theology”, a treatise of a 5^th  century outstanding Greek Neo-Platonist Proclus, a successor or “diadochus” of Plato’s cathedra – as Petritsi calls him. To this treatise Petritsi added his scholia or commentaries, more extensive than the treatise itself. The commentaries are unique in their importance, for they consist not only of meticulous analysis of Proclus’ philosophy, but in general discussion and explication of basic issues of Hellenic (Platonic) philosophy and an attempt to present, relying on the method of analogy, of his own, original, his Christianity-influenced interpretation of the Neoplatonic structure of reality. In its form and style, Petritsi’s work represents a cycle of lectures for his audience of students whom the author introduces into the thought of Hellenic philosophers. While discussing different issues, Petritsi quotes and analyses Plato and the Academics, Aristotle and Peripatetics, Pythagoras and Pythagoreans, Stoics; commentators of Plato and Aristotle: Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Asclepius, Alexander of Aphrodisias and others. Since the commentaries of Ioane Petritsi are aimed at students’ ears, they thoroughly bear a conversational air, which is the main factor defining his linguistic style. Throughout the entire commentaries he addresses a second person, a hearer, a student, who is always in the center of his attention. The author frequently refers to him calling him a “listener”, or a “perceiver”, a “hearer” and a “student”: “Behold the beauty of the theories, o, perceiver” [2, 154, 28]; “Look and perceive, o perceiver, those wonderful theories” [2, 186,13]; “and you, o listener, give to me your attention for theorizing” [2, 186,13]; “now what should we do, o student, who look through your intellect” [2, 107,17]; “listen, [o you], who desire to study” [2, 83, 19].
See More: http://kartvelologi.tsu.ge/index.php/en/journal/inner/48