Empyrean

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Empyrean illustration from Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy , 19th century

The Empyrean or Empyrion (from ancient Greek ἔμπυρος émpyros , German 'in the fire' ) was in the cosmology of the Middle Ages the highest part of the sky above the earth and is referred to as the area of ​​fire or light and the dwelling of the blessed.

So it says in Godeschalcus and Visio Godeschalci with German translation : “It is said that heaven is 'Empyrean', i.e. H. “Made entirely of fire” means, and that only according to its radiance, not also according to the heat; and that is also, one wants, the 'third heaven' to which Paul according to his self-testimony ”[2. Cor. 12: 2] “has been caught up; because one sets the air space as the first, the firmament as the second and this as the third in the row. ”According to Aristotle , the empyrean was filled with ether .

In Christianity , empyrean was the abode of God and the blessed . Empyrean is mentioned as such in Dante's Divine Comedy . In English there is still the word Empyrean Heaven ( Seventh Heaven ).

literature

Individual evidence

  1. a b Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Weltbild Verlag, Augsburg 1992
  2. ^ Duden, Foreign Dictionary, 1982
  3. Erwin Assmann (Ed.): Godeschalcus and Visio Godeschalci with German translation. (Sources and research on the history of Schleswig-Holstein 74), Neumünster 1979, p. 111