Аspects of the question on matter in the Byzantine thinker George Pachymeres

Abstract

In this study, focusing our attention on the Paraphrase of Dionysius the Areopagite’s De divinis nominibus, we investigate whether matter is in George Pachymeres (1242-1310) a passive condition, which constantly receives the divine intervention, or expresses sensibly the productive projections of the divine energies. Raising a number of questions, we approach, on the one hand, the concept of causality as a relation between God and the creation and as a relation among the created beings and, on the other hand, the meaning of the concepts of corruption and death, in the sense that all of them are related to the forms of matter. The most important conclusions of ours are that matter is for G. Pachymeres absolutely related to the concept of causality and that corruption is just a microcosmic scale fact. Regarding whether G. Pachymeres tends to adopt materialist theories, we conclude that he accepts matter as a main component of the created world, in the sense of the projection of the divine creative action, without ever ignoring metaphysics of transcendence.