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John Scotus Eriugena

c. 820–877

 

The first Irish philosopher to attain universal fame, John Scotus Eriugena was a figure of controversy.  He was, as John O'Meara pointed out, 'the most considerable philosopher in the Western world between Augustine and Thomas Aquinas and the greatest Irish philosopher (with the possible exception of Berkeley) ever'.

      John Scotus Eriugena (not to be confused with Duns Scotus, as he often is) introduced a radically new view of the universe, anticipating Copernicus by six hundred years.  But despite this eminence, Ireland has taken little interest in a man who was in the eyes of some, as one scholar notes, merely a boozy Irish monk given to sitting up and talking through the night.

      The date of his birth and his family background are unknown, though it seems certain that he was born in Ireland (for that is what the name, Eriugena means), and that his formidable learning, which included Greek and philosophy, was gained there.

      The year 851 found him at the court of the west Frankish king Charles the Bald, where he was in charge of the palace school.  But he had been trained as a theologian, so he also took part in the learned disputes arising from the doctrines of Gottschalk, a monk from Soissons, who had become indoctrinated with a heretical view of predestination and died in prison in 868.  There is, however, no real evidence that Eriugena was himself either a priest or a monk.

      He wrote a treatise, De Praedestione, which was condemned by the Council of Alence in 855; his ideas were called pultes scotorum, 'Irish stirabout'.  At the request of Charles the Bald, he translates the works of pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite into Latin; afterwards, these were to have a tremendous influence on the future development of medieval thought.

      Eriugena's own chief work was called De Divisione Naturae, which was also condemned by Pope Honorius III in 1225.  As late as 1658 it was seen as a danger to faith and morals, and was placed on the index of prohibited books by the Catholic Church.  He was not a scientist in the modern sense of the word - he did not make measurements or conduct experiments - but was more what the eighteenth century might have called a natural philosopher.

      In his system Eriugena placed the sun at the centre of the universe at a time when others believed (with Ptolemy) that the earth was at the centre.  He came to the conclusion that God and Heaven did not need to be physically above the stars, as was commonly conceived, nor was Hell located underground (as Dante was to imagine).  For these radical ideas Eriugena was accused by another theologian of being a pantheist - of identifying God with the material world.  But he was not in fact a pantheist.  As a rational person, he thought with firm logic and dismissed many superstitions.  On the evidence of Eriugena and his learning, the Dark Ages, so called, were not really quite so dark at all.

      After Charles the Bald died in 877, Eriugena was forced to leave France, suspected of being a heretic.  Some scholars assert he never left Europe and died there in 877.  But an early tradition asserts that he was called into England by Alfred the Great and was made abbot of Malmesbury.  Having lived by the pen he died by it, for he was murdered by his students - a fate wished upon many teachers, one suspects.  They stabbed him to death with their writing implements.

      Yet Eriugena's theories, neglected for so long, now appear to modern scholars fresh and newly relevant to a complete understanding of the early middle ages.