Chapter 5 - John Scottus Eriugena

Summary

Introduction:

John Scot(t)us Eriugena was an Irish scholar residing at the court of Charles the Bald, grandson of Charlemagne, king of the Franks. Charlemagne stood at the beginning of a cultural renaissance (renovatio), a blossoming of the arts and the intellectual life. Eriugena is mainly remembered for his voluminous work the Periphyseon [On Nature] or, in its Latin title, De Divisione Naturae [The Division of Nature], a dialogue between a Master (Nutritor) and his disciple (Alumnus). Other important works are his De Divina Praedestinatione [Treatise on Divine Predestination], the Homily on the Prologue of John, and an incomplete Commentary on the Gospel of John (and part of which is lost: all we have is the commentary on John 1:11–29; 3:1–4, 28; 6:5–14).

We do not know when Eriugena was born – he seems to have died some time around ad 870 or not too many years afterwards. He arrived at the court of Charles the Bald in the 840s. He knew Greek, and translated the complete works of Pseudo-Dionysius, the Ambigua and Quaestiones ad Thallassicum by Maximus Confessor, and Gregory of Nyssa’s De hominis opificio [On the Making of Man]. These authors had a major impact on Eriugena’s own thought, and he quotes extensively from their works in his own Periphyseon. Some of the main themes he adopts from Pseudo-Dionysius are the emphasis on the unknowable nature of God, the roles of negative and positive theology and the themes of procession and return.