“Vita in omnia pervenit”. Eriugena's Vitalism and the Influence of Marius Victorinus

Abstract

A defective lesson from the Greek manuscript of Dionysus used by John Scotus (zōa, instead of azōa, in Cael. Hier., IV, 177 C) gave rise to a remarkable development of the Exhibitors, in which Eriugena justifies his free translation “existentia” by postulating the conceptual equivalence zōa = onta. Such identification responds to a vitalist conception of the universe: life extends, according to John Scotus’ explanation, to all intelligible and sensitive beings, including those considered generally inanimate. However, in other Eriugenian texts we find the opposite thesis, more common, that life has less extension than being. As pseudo-Denys actually shares this traditional view, the vitalism supported by the Irish thinker in his Commentary must have come from other sources. The similarities in argument and language suggest that he draws inspiration from Marius Victorinus, whose Ad Candidum already provided the framework for an earlier passage in Chapter IV of Expos. in I. coel. The second part of the article confirms the hypothesis by showing that the exposition on the same question in Periphyseon, III, 727 C-729 C is visibly parallel to important pages in Adversus Arium (III and IV) that speak of universal animation, of the need for the “motus vitalis” in material things of the “vita generaliter generalis” and of the meaning of death. Moreover, the passages of the first Adv. Ar. are probably at the base of the Eriugenian conception of a “circular or spherical” movement and seem to have been especially essential parts of the texts on which Eriugena relies to attribute to Plato or the Platonists certain theories about the soul of the world.