Elena ENE D-VASILESCU - Gregory of Nyssa’s Fourth Century Water Organ (a Reconstruction) and the Elements of Creation in His Texts - Water, Air, Fire and Earth

Elena ENE D-VASILESCU

Professor in Byzantine Studies PhD University of Oxford

Abstract:

Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335 - c. 395), as the Platonists and most of the ancient thinkers, consider water, air, fire, and earth to be the fundaments of the created world. He qualifies the human person to be a microcosm, a small world that reproduces the universe. When, in his dialogue On the Soul and the Resurrection,[1] Nyssen describes two of the constituents of creation (air and water) and exemplifies how people use them, he does so by presenting a mechanism powered by those. This article presents a twenty first century reconstruction of that ‘installation’ described by Gregory in the fourth century AD.

Keywords:

Gregory of Nyssa, Macrina, Moses, earth, water, air, and fire

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