5 8 S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 7 - 2 Fa l l 2 0 2 1 5 Conclusion In our study we have introduced three fundamental medieval types of allegory to which we attribute three various spiritualities. The goal of the first – the rhetorical allegory of St. Augustine – was to motivate listeners to reflection and conversion. The school of St. Victor reacted to this impulse and based its spirituality on a new way of eruditio – perceiving written signs – reading as a prequel to meditation and contemplation as well as a specific outline of the lectio divina then came into practice in this school. The second allegory is related to creation and its integration at the center of attention. We mentioned mimetic-symbolic spirituality of St. Francis as an example of implementation of this allegory. He sees God in all creation, representing a counterweight to the spirituality fuga mundi (Lat. “escape from the ‘bad’ world”). For him, nature is a book about God addressed to all humanity, including illiterates. Pagan rituals and myths are the signs that help to proclaim God among non-believers. Franciscan spirituality opens up to the world, to foreign cultures, thus communicating supertemporal truths via poetry and ritual. The third allegory presented in this study was tropological. Its visual angle is the analogy of man and God, inner purification of imago and assimilation. It inspires the spirituality of affective mysticism of eremites in the 14th century, who tried to follow Jesus in the conditions of their life, thus appreciating immensely the role of the physical senses and emotions, that was absolutely unprecedented in medieval mysticism. These three types of allegories had the same source: they found their inspiration in the works of St. Augustine. However, they led to different types of spirituality. The first spurs a return to the core, has an intellectual undertone and is based on erudition. The second turns to the outer world including illiterates, with ritual symbolization as its instrument. The third offers long centuries of affective mysticism. Allegory specifically establishes something new and leads to other, even richer interpretations and a very important construction element of spirituality throughout the centuries. And the history shows us that it has played a crucial role in the dialogue between various cultures, helping to interconnect all that seems distant and strange at the first sight and emphasizing what they have in common (Dojčár 2018, 45). Acknowledgment The study originated as a partial outcome of the project VEGA 1/0637/20. Notes [1] Allegory, from the Gr. allegoria, is commonly understood as a metaphor. In Latin, we find its various synonyms: permutatio, “inversion”, or the later alieniloquium. At the beginning, allegory was seen as any metaphoric expression, however, its meaning has changed gradually. [2] St. Augustine sees a sign as something that points to some other thing (“omne signum… res aliqua est”–Augustine 2014, 454), describing something other than the literal meaning (“quae significant aliquid”–Augustine 2014, 250). [3] The term integumentum often occurs in relation to the terms involucrum and velamen. In all its meanings, it denotes “furtiveness”, “obscuring”. [4] Interreligious dialogue leverages the dialectics of allegory even to create new meaning and shared references. This is an ideal locus for the rehabilitation of syncretistic religious references that turn out to be an accurate category for understanding the creation of liminal space afforded by interreligious dialogue.
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