At the beginning of the 6th century AD, the Roman empire is rocked by shocking social, political and religious conflicts. A series of laws (Codes) are issued, prohibiting the practice of ancient worship and various cultural institutions, forcing the population to embrace Christianity in order to maintain the identity of citizens of the empire. The definitive end of an entire era is now visible.
During that period, a series of philosophical writings attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite (1st post-Christian century), a supposed disciple of Paul, appeared, in which a strange mixture of Christian beliefs and Neoplatonic philosophy can be detected. These texts were to become over time one of the most important for the development and evolution of Christian thought.
Centuries were to pass before the authorship of these writings was disputed, which maintains to this day a long debate about the identity and purposes of their author.
In this short but extremely important academic work, the Finnish Historian, Dr. Tuomo Lankila presents the extremely interesting, if charming, theory of the pseudo-Dionysian crypto-pagan identity. According to her, the writing of the controversial texts was, for Hellenism, the last organized attempt at resistance by one or more members of the Platonic Academy of Athens, with the ultimate goal of creating an elaborate philosophical time capsule, which at some subsequent turn of time was to emerge again , achieving the return of Greek philosophy to a more enlightened world.
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