Short description: Method of mystical or spiritual interpretation of statements or events

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]

In a letter to his patron Can Grande della Scala, the poet Dante explained that his Divine Comedy could be read both literally and allegorically; and that the allegorical meaning could be subdivided into the moral and the anagogical.[5]

## See also

* Allegorical interpretation of the Bible
* Biblical hermeneutics
* Historical-grammatical method
* Arcs of Descent and Ascent

## 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.
5. ↑ Dante (1949). The Divine Comedy. I: Hell. Translated by Dorothy L. Sayers. Penguin Classics. pp. 14–15.

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