He was accordingly condemned by the Council, and Raban wrote a letter to Hincmar to inform him that a vagabond monk (gyrovagus), of the diocese of Soissons, held heretical doctrine, and was condemned by the Synod with the approbation of King Louis. He also requests Hincmar to convene a Synod in his own diocese, and condemn his doctrines in like manner. Hincmar was not slow in following this advice. That great bishop, for more than thirty years the central figure of the French Church, was in every way qualified to fill the high place which he occupied as the first prelate and peer in France. He was learned, eloquent, and resolute, a lasting friend, and, to those whom he considered in the wrong, an unrelenting foe. In his youth he had been a monk of the great Abbey of St. Denis, so that between Raban Maur, a Benedictine monk of Fulda, and Hincmar, a Benedictine of St. Denis, the former now the most powerful prince-bishop in Germany, and the latter the first prelate in France, the unfortunate Gotteschalk, a runaway monk of their order, could hope for little mercy. A great Synod of his province was convoked by Hincmar in the palace of Quiercy. The king was there, and a great number of his bishops and abbots. Gotteschalk was introduced and interrogated, but persisted in his opinions, and, if we may credit Hincmar, was very insolent in his demeanour. So the bishops ordered him to be degraded, and the abbots ordered him to be flogged according to the rule of St. Benedict, and after that to be imprisoned in an ergastulum. A great fire was kindled, Gotteschalk was ordered to take his MS. on Predestination in his hand, and the lash was then applied until he should himself fling the book into the flames, which he was glad to do very soon. He was afterwards imprisoned in the Convent of Hautvilliers, where he remained contumacious for nine years, and died, it is said, in the same spirit.
But the severity of Hincmar defeated his purpose. He was so severely attacked by several French theologians that he found it necessary to ask his friend, Scotus, to come to his assistance, and the “Master” promptly responded to the call. In A.D. 851 he published his Liber de Prædestinatione, a short treatise in nineteen chapters, on a very burning question. This book at once raised a tremendous storm on all sides. He adopted a new system of discussion, arguing rather from reason than authority, and dealing his blows indiscriminately on friend and foe. He ranges through all metaphysics, discusses the nature of sin, the origin of evil, the eternal punishment of the wicked, and the qualities of the bodies that will be hereafter united to the glorified and condemned souls. He somewhat contemptuously speaks of his opponents, and acts on those independent principles which he elsewhere so eloquently proclaims in a sentence that has something of the sonorous ring of a Ciceronian period.[431] Wenilo, Archbishop of Sens, at once sent this treatise of Scotus to Prudentius, and he was not very long in pronouncing what he thought of it. The next year he published his great treatise De Prædestinatione contra Joannem Scotum, with an introduction addressed to Archbishop Wenilo. We have no hesitation in saying that this introduction is written in language rather vulgar, and by no means charitable. He heaps all manner of abusive epithets on the head of the redoubtable Scotus, and although he declares that he is animated only by zeal for the Catholic faith, and the affection of true charity, we think he would have given better proof of both by greater moderation in his language. He declares that he found in the book of Scotus the poison of Pelagianism, the madness of Origen, and the wild fury (furiositatem) of the Collyrian heretics. He speaks of the impudence of Scotus in barking at (oblatrantem) the orthodox faith and the Catholic Fathers, and he hints pretty clearly that it was the devil himself who vomited so many blasphemies by the mouth of John and Julian, and so on to the end of the chapter. In the same spirit, but in more moderate language, Florus attacked the book of Scotus, whom he calls a “vaniloquus et garrulus homo,” and speaks of his writings as “plena mendacii et erroris.” For the present we shall not discuss in what or how far Scotus erred in his book, but he was certainly on the right side in supporting Hincmar, and although neither Florus nor Prudentius held all the opinions of Gotteschalk, it would not be difficult to extract from their writings many propositions, which would need to be interpreted in a very charitable spirit, indeed, before they could be reconciled with the commonly received doctrines of our Catholic theologians.
But Hincmar was not the man to yield to the noisy declamation of the theologians of the South. In A.D. 853 he convened another Synod at Quiercy, in which he formulated with great accuracy his own doctrine on grace and predestination. They are well known as the Capitula Carisiaca.[432]
It is said that Prudentius signed them, but he certainly in a short time afterwards formulated four counter-propositions, which it is not easy to reconcile with Catholic doctrine, and in this proceeding he was countenanced by Remigius of Lyons. Later on, in the Council of Valence in A.D. 855, and in that of Langres in A.D. 859, the southern theologians and bishops attacked the capitula of Hincmar, at least by implication, and denounced the book written by Scotus as a devil’s commentary rather than an argument of faith, and said it contained nothing but old women’s stories, and Irish porridge nauseous to the purity of faith. They did not expressly mention his name, but there can be no doubt about the reference in the words—“Scotorumque pultes puritati fidei nauseam inferentes.” But in the end Hincmar prevailed, and his doctrine was sanctioned in the Synod of Tousi, in the year A.D. 860, where a great many prelates of both parties were assembled from fourteen provinces, with twelve metropolitans, and the three kings at their head—Charles the Bald, Lothaire of Lorraine, and Charles of Provence. So the censures of Florus and Prudentius, and the condemnation of Valence and Langres cannot have much weight in blackening the theological character of Scotus Erigena.
The next discussion in which Scotus is said to have taken part occurred shortly afterwards. It has been stated by many writers that he was the first who denied the doctrine of the Real Presence in the Western Church. Certainly, Berengarius, in the eleventh century, claimed Scotus as his teacher on the new doctrine which he introduced; and the Sacramentarians regarded him as a great apostle of what they called the truth. A book on the Eucharist, attributed to Scotus by Berengarius, was condemned in three synods, and committed to the flames as impious and heretical.
But there is no contemporary evidence to show that Scotus wrote a treatise on the Eucharist, and, on the other hand, there is positive evidence which goes to show the identity of the work attributed to Scotus with the treatise that has certainly been written by Ratramnus. The very words, on account of which Berengarius says the book was ordered to be burnt at the Council of Rome in A.D. 1059, namely—“ea quae in altare consecrantur esse figuram, pignus, et signum Corporis et Sanguinis Christi,” and which were used in a heretical sense by Berengarius but not by their author, are found in the Book of Ratramnus, the MS. of which still bears his name in uncial letters of the tenth century. Another expression attributed by Ascelinus to the unfortunate Irishman—“specie geruntur ista, non veritate”—are nowhere to be found in the existing writings of Scotus, but are found exactly in the same MS. of Ratramnus. There can be no doubt that Scotus, in his commentary on St. John, did use inaccurate language, but certainly not in a heretical sense.[433] Yet, his language displeased some of his best friends, so that Hincmar in his second book on Predestination seems to attribute to Scotus—for he does not mention his name—the error of teaching that the Sacrament of the Altar was not the real body and blood, but only a memorial of them, whereas Scotus taught in reality, or certainly meant to teach, that it was both—namely, a memorial, and at the same time a reality. Adrevaldus, too, wrote a treatise—“De Corpore et Sanguine Domini contra ineptias J. Scoti.” This is the only contemporary evidence we have concerning the alleged errors of Scotus on the Eucharist. Just 200 years later, however, in consequence of the fame of Scotus, and the similarity of their style, the Book of Ratramnus was attributed to Scotus both by Berengarius and most of his contemporaries. So it shared the fate of Berengarius himself, it was condemned by the Council of Paris in A.D. 1050, and in the same year it was anathematised by the Councils of Rome and Vercelli. Nine years later Pope Nicholas II. made Berengarius himself throw the book into the fire in presence of an immense crowd of people at Rome. And so it came to pass that Scotus was censured for opinions which he never held, and for a book which he never wrote.
Almost from his first arrival in France, Scotus had been engaged in translating from the Greek into Latin the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius. In the year A.D. 828 the Greek Emperor, Michael Balbus—the stammerer—had sent, as a present to Louis le Debonaire, a copy in Greek of the writings attributed to Dionysius, the Areopagite. Dionysius, mentioned in the 17th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, was said to have been at first bishop of Athens, and to have been afterwards sent into France by St. Clement, where he preached the Gospel for many years, and died a martyr’s death. The works attributed to St. Dionysius, although really written by some forger of the end of the fifth or beginning of the sixth century, were at this time regarded as genuine. Hence, the Greek Emperor’s gift was very highly prized in France, and preserved with the greatest care and veneration as the undoubted work of the apostle of the French people, and especially of Paris, where the great Abbey of St. Denis, for many ages the cemetery of the kings of France, was built in his honour. But these writings in Greek were a sealed fountain to most of the French scholars at the time. Hilduin, a monk of St. Denis, was charged with their custody, and commissioned to translate them, but failed in the attempt. When, however, the exiled Irish scholar came to Paris, the king, to his great joy, soon discovered that he was a perfect master of the Greek tongue, and asked him to undertake the translation of the writings of the Areopagite. Scotus gladly undertook the task imposed upon him by his royal patron, and executed it in such a way as to please the man of all others best qualified to pronounce a critical opinion—Anastasius, the Roman Librarian. In a letter written to the king, in A.D. 875, he declares it to be a wonderful thing that a man like Scotus, a barbarian, living at the end of the world—vir ille barbarus in finibus mundi positus—could understand and translate into another tongue the writings of the Areopagite. But the Holy Spirit, he says, was the chief agent who filled him at once with fire and eloquence—qui hunc ardentem et loquentem fecit—and charity was the mistress who taught him for the instruction and edification of many. He adds that his only fault was to translate too literally, and the cause of that was his great humility, which did not permit him to change the exact order and meaning of the words of so great a writer.
We cannot ascertain for certain the year of its appearance; it was probably about A.D. 855, but in this case, too, Scotus was unfortunate. Whether it was that the French theologians had given him a bad character in Rome on account of the book on Predestination, or, as others think, that the Greek scholar was considered to be a supporter of Greek influences in the Court of Charles during the Photian intrigues, it is certain that at this time he was no favourite at Rome. Accordingly, when his work appeared, Pope Nicholas wrote a letter to Charles the Bald, in which he complains of the publication of this translation without the usual apostolic sanction—quod juxta morem ecclesiae nobis mitti debet—especially as John the Scot, who translated it, although said to be a man of much learning, was by many persons regarded as not altogether sound in his doctrine—non sapere in quibusdam frequenti rumore dicitur. Therefore the Pope orders Charles either to send the aforesaid John to Rome to give an account of himself, or at least not to permit him to remain any longer at Paris as the head of the University—aut certo Parisiis in studio, cujus capital jam olim fuisse perhibetur, morari non sinatis. This letter was written in the third year of Nicholas’s pontificate, either A.D. 861 or 862. We do not know what effect the letter produced, whether the king dismissed Scotus from his high position or not. It is very improbable that he did dismiss him, seeing the way in which Anastasius, himself a Roman, spoke of Scotus twelve years later as a holy, learned, and humble man. Most probably by that time they had got better information concerning Scotus in Rome, and found out that he was neither so unsound in doctrine, nor so Photian in his tendencies as his enemies made him out to be. At this time, however, when the Pope wrote to Charles, Scotus took very good care not to go to Rome, where he might have met the fate of Gotteschalk; nor does it appear that Charles dismissed his favourite from the palace, although requested to do so by the Pope himself.
Scotus not only translated and wrote extensive commentaries on the writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius, but about the same period composed a profound, original, and eloquent work in five books, which he entitles Περὶ Φυσέως Μερισμοῦ, seu De Divisione Naturae. This work has been greatly praised, and greatly and justly censured. We shall, however, for the present reserve our judgment on its undoubted merits, as well as on its demerits, and confine ourselves to sketching its eventful history. It is a dialogue between a master and his pupil after the Platonic fashion, not indeed with Plato’s unrivalled beauty of form, but with much of the eloquence and subtlety of the Greek mind. No other scholar of the Western Church in any age was so filled with the spirit of the philosophy and theology of the Greeks, and whose mind was so closely akin to the mind of Greece. The Irish, like the Greek mind, has a natural love for speculation, is quick, subtle, and far-seeing, has greater power of abstraction and generalisation—that is to say, greater metaphysical power than the phlegmatic Anglo-Saxon. Scotus was a typical Celt, strongly developing all the intellectual peculiarities of the race. Moreover, he was familiar with Plato, and Aristotle, and the Greek Fathers, far more than with the Latin Fathers. He had, by close study, imbibed the spirit of Neo-Platonic philosophy from the writings of Dionysius, whom he not unnaturally regarded with the reverence due to an apostle, and so his whole soul was made by nature, study, and duty, intensely Greek. No doubt this was in itself one great source of his errors, both real and imaginary, because his critics seeing how he erred in some things where they could fathom his philosophy, imagined he erred in many more where they could scarcely guess at the meaning of his words. Hence William of Malmesbury very justly says of this work of Scotus, “De Divisione Naturae,” that it was very useful for the solution of some difficult questions, “Si tamen ignoscatur ei in quibusdum, quibus a Latinorum tramite deviavit dum in Græcos acriter oculos intendit.” His eyes were on the Greeks, and his spirit was with the Greeks, and so his teaching and his language in many respects seemed strange and erroneous to the Latins. It has been said that this book of Scotus was corrupted by his enemies the more easily to refute him, and by heretics the more easily to defend their own errors. But the supposition is quite gratuitous, unsupported by evidence, and unnecessary as an explanation of facts. His doctrine in many points was attacked in his own time, his errors were palliated by friends and amplified by enemies. In later ages erratic sectaries, who vexed the Church of France in the beginning of the thirteenth century, appealed to the writings of Scotus in defence of their errors, and thus he was made a third time a scape-goat to carry the sins of others. We learn from the Chronicon of the monk Alberic, but from no other source, that in the year A.D. 1225, Honorius III. sent a Brief to the archbishops and bishops of France, in which he passed a severe judgment on the book of Scotus, entitled “Periphysis,” for so the monk writes it. The Bishop of Paris had informed the Pope that this work was full of heretical depravity, and had been condemned by the Archbishop of Sens and his suffragans, that it was hid in many monasteries, where cloistered and scholastic men, thinking it a great thing to propound new opinions, spent much time in the study of the book. So the Pope ordered it to be carefully sought after, whenever it was found to be solemnly burned, and inflicted excommunication, ipso facto, on those who should knowingly presume to keep it in their possession. This severe prohibition was effective. The MS. copies were everywhere sought out, and nearly all destroyed, and no Catholic dared to publish it. But in the year A.D. 1681, Thomas Gale, of Oxford, printed it at that city. A few years later, in A.D. 1685, the old prohibition was renewed, and the work placed on the Index, where it still remains, although reprinted in Migne’s Patrology.
Scotus also wrote several Greek and Latin poems on various subjects, thirteen of which, mostly Latin, are printed in Migne’s edition of his works. Like most poems in foreign, and especially in dead languages, they are merely artificial flowers of poesy—stiff, scentless, and lifeless; but they serve to show the familiarity of the writer even in that rude age with the languages of Greece and Rome.