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Document Details : Title: Language as a Unifier in Catherine of Siena's Mystic Works Author(s): AL, M. Catharina Journal: Studies in Spirituality Volume: 32 Date: 2022-2023 Pages: 247-286 DOI: 10.2143/SIS.32.0.3292461 Abstract : This article is about the role of language as a unifier in the mystical works of Catherine of Siena. It answers the question if Catherine of Siena can be considered a Dominican thinker. The research places her in the debate in the search for the possibility of knowledge and the role of language in words and images, which was a debate in her time on the role of universals. She has written in her book the Dialogue her own epistemology, which keeps the possibility of thinking and reaching God, without losing the omnipotence of God. Catherine was not the first to use symbolic language as active vertical thinking, to make concepts and images from words and ideas, but she does it in a specific Dominican intellectualistic way. This act of the imagination is the way up to God, meeting the way down from Him: immediate knowledge coming from inspirations, intuitions, visions and divinely given images. The symbol of the image of God as the Ocean in which we can swim and dive ever deeper to gain new insights, is showing the intellectualists in her time, that God is endless and everlasting, always higher and deeper than we are. |
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