It is as a philosopher, however, that Eriugena stands without an equal during his own time. It has been remarked that Eriugena appears to have been born subject to a strange fatality whereby men’s opinions are always changing in regard to his philosophical views and the position to be assigned to him among philosophers. In the criticisms by Maurice Milman, Staudenmaier, St. Rene, Tailander, Christlieb, Hauréau, and Huber the view of each writer differs in some important respect from the views of the rest.[524] This is no less true of the criticism of living philosophers as the following quotations from two standard works on the History of Philosophy go to show. De Wülf writes: “In opposition to the majority of historians who describe Eriugena as the first of scholastics, we have no hesitation in calling him the first of anti-scholastics—and the most formidable at the present epoch. For his teaching propounds principles which are opposed to those of scholasticism and which form the starting-point of opposition movements.”[525] Turner, on the other hand, says that Eriugena illustrates the many sidedness of the scholastic movement and proceeds as follows: “To classify as anti-scholastic whatever does not agree with the synthetic systems of the great masters of scholasticism is to break the line of continuous historical development which led through failure and partial success of Eriugena, Abelard, and other philosophers to the philosophy of the thirteenth century. Scholasticism in its final form is the outcome of the forces of Christian civilization which in different conditions and in less favourable circumstances produced the imperfect scholasticism of the period of beginning and the period of growth.”[526]
Whatever may be the difference of opinion as to his place in a particular school or system of philosophy there can be but one as to his abilities as a scholar and an original thinker. According to De Wülf, “he must be regarded as one of the most striking personalities in the world of culture and learning in the early Middle Ages. He was far in advance of his time. While his contemporaries were only lisping in philosophy and his successors for centuries did little more than discuss a small number of disconnected philosophical questions, Eriugena in the ninth century worked out a complete philosophical synthesis. … He was at once a scholar and a man of genius. What was altogether unique in the ninth century, he knew Greek, of which Alcuin scarcely knew the alphabet.”[527] Turner while wishing to give a fair estimate of his place in history, warns us “not to let his brilliant qualities blind us to the enormity of his errors,”[528] but the same writer acknowledges that “he was without doubt the most learned man in his century, he was the first of the representatives of the new learning to attempt a system of constructive thought and he brought to his task a truly Celtic wealth of imagination and a spiritual force which lifted him above the plane of his contemporaries—mere epitomisers and commentators. His philosophy has all the charm which pantheism always possesses for a certain class of minds. It is subtle, vague, and poetic. When we come to examine its contents and method we find it dominated with the spirit of Neo-Platonism. Through the works of Pseudo-Dionysius and of Maximus, Eriugena made acquaintance with the teaching of Plotinus and Proculus; and when he came to construct his own system of thought he reproduced the essential traits of Neo-Platonic philosophy—pantheism, the doctrine of intuition, and universal redemption.”
The sentence enunciated by Eriugena in his work on Predestination[529] as well as elsewhere that the true religion is also the true philosophy and vice versa is the theme of the entire scholastic philosophy. The consequences that follow from this maxim as enunciated that every doubt in regard to religious matters can be refuted by philosophy appeared so preposterous that a meeting of French clergy declared it to be insanity or blasphemy.[530] Religion is to Eriugena in its relations to philosophy what authority is to reason. In respect to rank reason precedes so also in respect to time, since what is taught by authority of the Fathers was discovered by them with the help of reason. The weak must naturally subject themselves to authority, but those who are less weak should be content with this all the less because the figurative nature of many expressions and further the undeniable accommodation exercised by the Fathers toward the understanding of the uneducated demand the use of reason as a corrective.[531] By reason is to be understood, however, not mere subjective opinion but the common thought which reveals itself in conversation when out of two reasons both are made one, each of the speakers becoming as it were the other.[532] While he maintains the priority of reason he is far from being a rationalist. Indeed he is more inclined to take side with the mystics—to belittle all reason unless it is illumined from on high. “Instead of rationalising theology, he would theosophise philosophy.”[533]
Thus we see how Eriugena’s philosophical speculations naturally became the basis for innumerable controversies which are still far from being definitely decided. Such controversies, however, have served a useful purpose in the history of philosophy. Eriugena assigns to philosophy the fourfold task: to divide, to define, to demonstrate, to analyse. This may be described as Eriugena’s definition of the applicability of dialectic to philosophy and theology—a notion which, like the union of faith and science, is destined to develop in the subsequent growth of philosophy.[534]
Eriugena’s knowledge of Greek, and fondness for Greek dogma and Alexandrine philosophy, led to the report that he made several journeys to Greece. But this conjecture has no foundation in fact.[535] Indeed the evidence we have collected with reference to the course of studies pursued in the Irish monastic schools would point to Ireland as the most likely place where he laid the foundations of his classical scholarship.
INFLUENCE OF IRISH SCHOLARSHIP:
The scope of Irish scholarship may in some measure be judged from the existing works of the great and better-known scholars mentioned in this and other chapters, but the precise influence of that scholarship is more difficult to estimate. It is only in very recent years that we have begun to realise how much native Irish literature and history owes to the Irish monastic schools. In the wider field of European scholarship there is still much room for investigation before we can confidently assign to Irish monastic scholarship its proper place. The superiority of Irish classical learning has been demonstrated and is now acknowledged by practically all scholars who have made an intensive study of the early Middle Ages.[536] But as a discerning historian has remarked, “what is of greatest significance is the fact that there reigned not only among the professed scholars but among the plain missionaries (whose name was legion) a classical spirit, a love of literature for its own sake and a keen delight in poetry. They brought imagination, they brought spiritual force to a world well nigh sunk in materialism. … Their lighter productions show but one side of their Scottish nature. Their earnest single pursuit of learning in the widest sense attainable, their solid hard work as scholars is no less characteristic. Ireland was once the university not only of Northern England, but of the Frankish realm and if that progress was arrested after the fatal inroads of the Norsemen after 795 A.D. the seed which the Scots had sown in other lands grew to a nobler maturity than ever it reached on its own soil. … Wherever they went they founded schools.”[537]
Many other tributes to Irish monastic scholarship might be quoted. We have selected but two of these partly because of the weight of authority rightly associated with the author’s name in each case and partly because they summarise the detailed evidence we have presented during the course of our study.
Turner says: “The Irish teachers left a lasting impression on their own and succeeding generations. Not only were they the chief teachers of grammar, poetry, astronomy, music, and geography when these branches had no other, or scarcely any other, representative on the continent of Europe, but they also profoundly influenced the course of mediæval thought in matters of philosophy and theology. Their elucidation of the Gospel of St. John and their commentaries on the Epistles of St. Paul formed a new school of exegesis. … They introduced the Neo-Platonic point of view in metaphysical speculation and carried the art of dialectic to a higher point than it ever before attained. It is no exaggeration to say that they were the founders of scholasticism and that Ireland is the Ionia of mediæval philosophy.”[538]
Zimmer too shows that the Irish missionaries were not merely the representatives of Christianity: “they were instructors in every branch of science and learning of the time, possessors and bearers of a higher culture than was at that time to be found anywhere on the Continent, and can surely claim to have been the pioneers,—to have laid the corner stone of western culture on the Continent.”[539]