Sacred Place in Early Medieval Neoplatonism

The twentieth-century discovered the concept of sacred place largely through the work of Martin Heidegger and Mircea Eliade. Their writings on sacred place respond to the modern manipulation of nature and secularization of space, and so may seem distinctively post-modern, but their work has an important and unacknowledged precedent in the Neoplatonism of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Sacred Place in Early Medieval Neoplatonism traces the appearance and development of sacred place in the writings of Neoplatonists from the third to ninth centuries, and sets them in the context of present-day debates over place and the sacred.

'This is a fascinating and creative approach to the study of early medieval Neoplatonism, part of Palgrave Macmillan's New Middle Ages Serices....the book is judicious and careful in its scholarly conclusions.' - John Peter Kenney, Ecclesiastical History

'Dr Harrington's book is fascinating, the product of obvious erudition...there are some brilliant insights in the treatment of medieval writings.' - A.M.C. Casiday, The Heythrop Journal

Auteur
L. MICHAEL HARRINGTON is Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Dallas, Texas, USA.

Contenu
Introduction: Neoplatonism Inside and Outside History The Rediscovery of Place The Neoplatonic Background Dionysius the Areopagite The Dionysian Tradition The Loss of Place Conclusion: Rethinking the Sacred Place Bibliographical Survey: Neoplatonism and the Emerging Literature on Place