Synesius of cyrene biography definition

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Synesius of cyrene biography definition

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Syngenta International AG. Synnex Corporation. The duties of a bishop were uncongenial to him, fond as he was of his amusements as well as of religious study. He could not forsake the wife given him by "God, the law and the sacred hand of Theophilus". His amusements might go, much as he would hate to see his "darling dogs no longer allowed to hunt".

Still, "if it is God's will, I will submit". But there was a worse obstacle, "Philosophy is opposed to the opinions of the vulgar. I certainly shall not admit that the soul is posterior to the body … that the world and all its parts shall perish together. The resurrection … I consider something sacred and ineffable and am far from sharing the ideas of the multitude".

He could keep silence but not "pretend to hold opinions which he did not hold". Theophilus, he said, must know everything and decide. Seven months elapsed between the writing of this letter and Synesius's consecration. That Synesius should yield is hardly surprising. His dogmatic perceptions were not keen enough to make him realize the falseness of his position as a bishop.

Theophilus, the persecutor of the Origenists , is the difficulty. Perhaps, like many masterful men, he could put the telescope to his blind eye and refuse to see what he did not wish to see. Perhaps the negations in Synesius's letter were not his last word with regard to doctrinal questions. Baronius held that Synesius defamed himself to escape the episcopate, and this was also the opinion of Jeremy Taylor, "for all this Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, consecrated him, as knowing all this to be but stratagem and the arts of an odd fantastic humility " [Ductor dubitantium, iii, 2].

The "fantastic humility " solution of the problem has found very few supporters. As a bishop , Synesius devoted himself to the multiform duties of this office, without, however, concealing how uncongenial such a press of business was to him. Synesius would never cease to believe this, and always remained friends with the wise woman, with whom he continued to exchange letters note [E.

In these years, he composed several texts, which show that he was a talented writer. His Greek is usually an excellent Attic , but his hymns - lighthearted and majestic at the same time - are composed in good Dorian. In these hymns, he praises the beauty of the universe. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he does not treat the subject in a pedantic way.

One of his works is On Dreams , which are, in his view, divine revelations that a good philosopher can understand; they are a way to "become linked with the spheres, that is to say, be carried up as if to its own natural state of being", and reach the origin of our existence without having to perform rituals or visit the temples which had been closed in His treatise On Dog Breeding is now lost.

A trip from Alexandria to Cyrene, during which he survived shipwreck, is commemorated in a boyish Letter 4.