Anagoge

Anagoge (ἀναγωγή), sometimes spelled anagogy, is a Greek word suggesting a "climb" or "ascent" upwards. The anagogical is a method of mystical or spiritual interpretation of statements or events, especially scriptural exegesis, that detects allusions to the afterlife.[1]

Certain medieval theologians describe four methods of interpreting the scriptures: literal/historical, tropological, allegorical, and anagogical. Hugh of St. Victor, in De scripturis et scriptoribus sacris, distinguished anagoge, as a kind of allegory, from simple allegory.[2] He differentiated in the following way: in a simple allegory, an invisible action is (simply) signified or represented by a visible action; Anagoge is that "reasoning upwards" (sursum ductio), when, from the visible, the invisible action is disclosed or revealed.[3]

The four methods of interpretation point in four different directions: The literal/historical backwards to the past, the allegoric forwards to the future, the tropological downwards to the moral/human, and the anagogic upwards to the spiritual/heavenly.[4]

See also

References
  1. Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s. v. "anagogical interpretation", accessed October 11, 2012
  2. "De Scripturis et Scriptoribus Sacris", in Hugonis de S. Victore... Opera Omnia, I (of 3), Patrologia Latina Vol. 175 (J.-P. Migne, 1854), columns 9-28, Chapter III: De triplici intelligentia sacrae Scripturae, at Column 12, loc. B.
  3. "... est simplex allegoria, cum per visibile factum aliud invisibile factum significatur. Anagoge, id est sursum ductio, cum per visibile invisibile factum declaratur."
  4. Charles Cummings, Monastic Practices, CS 75 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1986), 14-15.
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