The Division of Nature

John Scotus Eriugena (c.815 - c.877) was a philosopher, theologian, poet, and master of the palace school of Aachen under the Carolingians. Of his various works, the most impressive was an attempt to reconcile and synthesize all known philosophy up to his time.

De divisione naturae ("On the division of nature") is written in five books as a dialogue between a teacher and student. The title was put to it years later; John called it Periphyseon, from the Greek for "on natures." The intent is to lay out how the Creator is connected to his creation of man and the rest of Creation.

The master explains to the student that "Authority is the source of knowledge, but the reason of mankind is the norm by which all authority is judged." Their socratic dialogue aims to explain all of nature, which is his term for the whole of creation and all its divisions. The "divisions" of nature are:

1. Creating and not created.
2. Created and creating.
3. Created and not creating.
4. Not creating and not created.

Number one is God, who creates but was not created, being eternal. Second are the Platonic forms which are the templates for the objects we perceive. Third is the corporeal world of things that do not themselves create anything. Finally we have God again, into which all created things ultimately return. He derives this four-fold plan from Augustine's City of God.

Note that numbers one and four are both about God. We'll look at the reason for this division in a translation of his own words:

Let us then make an “analytical” or regressive collection of each of the two pairs of the four forms we have mentioned so as to bring them into a unity. The first, then, [and] fourth are one since they are understood of God [alone]. For He is the Principle of all things which have been created by Him, and the end of all things which seek Him so that in Him they may find their eternal and immutable rest. [link]

This enormous work influenced many theologians in the future. The Divisione and Eriugena's translation of a biography of St. Maximus the Confessor (also one of Eriugena's influences) influenced Bernard of Clairvaux. Hildegard of Bingen shows Eriugena's influence in her Ordo Virtutum ("Order of the Virtues") and the Scivias about her visions. Some see his influence on Nicholas of Cusa.

Bertrand Russell called him "the most astonishing person of the ninth century." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [link] states he "is the most significant Irish intellectual of the early monastic period. He is generally recognized to be both the outstanding philosopher (in terms of originality) of the Carolingian era and of the whole period of Latin philosophy stretching from Boethius to Anselm."

A late anecdote (with no support) by William of Malmesbury says that Eriugena later in life went to teach at Oxford and angered his students to the point where he was stabbed to death by their styluses. William, who edited some of Eriugena's works, also thought he was a heretic because he showed too much Greek influence rather than Latin.

I think we should go back a few centuries and meet Maximus the Confessor, who influenced Eriugena. See you tomorrow.

John the Irish-born

Alcuin of York is celebrated as a learned man and the head of the palace school of Aachen under Charlemagne, but one of his successors at Aachen is considered one of the most consequential philosophers of the entire Carolingian era. His name was John Scotus Eriugena, who was invited there by Charles the Bald, Charlemagne's grandson. Where did he come from? The answer is in the name.

He describes himself as "Eriugena" in his manuscripts, which means "Ireland-born." The "Scotus" part of his name is also how Irish or Gaels were called, so his name in full translates as "John the Irish-born Gael." (Ireland was called "Scotia Major" while Scotland was called "Scotia Minor.")

Educated in Ireland, he was invited to Aachen by Charles in 845, by which time his reputation for learning was already established. The school at Aachen flourished under him even more than under Alcuin, as it became a source not only of learning but of philosophy, which was John's strength. He was a Neoplatonist (following the ideas of some 3rd-century Greek philosophers who differed in some ways from Plato), and brought some of their ideas to Western Europe through Aachen.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states:

Eriugena’s thought is best understood as a sustained attempt to create a consistent, systematic, Christian Neoplatonism from diverse but primarily Christian sources. Eriugena had a unique gift for identifying the underlying intellectual framework, broadly Neoplatonic but also deeply Christian, assumed by the writers of the Christian East. [link]

Among his writings is De Divina Praedestinatione, "Concerning Divine Predestination." This was a request from Charles the Bald and Archbishop Hincmar of Reims to counter the predestinarianism of Gottschalk of Orbais, who preached that predestination was absolute in the sense that the damned were already damned since birth and free will did not apply. John wrote that God cannot predestine human freedom, people are saved or damned due to their own free will. Sin and evil are not caused by God; they are a rejection or negation of the good that comes from God, and it is the person's free will that leads them to choose not the good but its opposite.

He was thought to be the author of De Corpore et Sanguine Domini, "On the Body and Blood of the Lord," arguing that the bread and wine of the Mass were simply symbolic representations of Jesus' flesh and blood. (It was really written by Ratramnus.) Berengar of Tours later got into a lot of trouble over this idea, refuting transubstantiation.

Eriugena's De Divisione Naturae ("On the Division of Nature"), is considered his most important work, a summary and synthesis of 15 centuries of philosophy. We will tackle a basic understanding of its contents tomorrow.

Ratramnus

When Charles the Bald visited the abbey of New Corvey in 843, he said he would like to have the Eucharist explained to him. In response, the monk Ratramnus (died c.868) wrote a treatise, De Corpore et Sanguine Domini, "On the Body and Blood of the Lord," in which he explained that the bread and wine represented the body and blood of Jesus figuratively.

The abbot of Corvey at the time was Paschasius Radbertus, who also wrote De Corpore et Sanguine Domini, in which he explained that the bread and wine were changed to be equal to the actual flesh and blood of Jesus. He presented a version of his work to Charles. These opposing views did not seem to create any controversy or conflict at the time. That all happened later when others took sides on the question.

Ratramnus also wrote works such as De Praedestinatione Dei, "On the Predestination of God." In this work he denied the ideas of Gottschalk of Orbais, an itinerant Saxon theologian who visited Corvey. Gottschalk believed that predestination worked on both the saved and the damned. Ratramnus defended this idea.

One of his other works was a letter about the Cynocephali, the dog-headed men. The archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, Saint Rimbert (c.830 - 888), while on a mission in Scandinavia, heard that there were communities of men with the heads of dogs living nearby. Rimbert's question was simple: if they were living in organized communities as he was told, were they then capable of reason and therefore of the race of Adam and suitable subjects for Christian conversion?

There was a long history of cynocephali going back to classical times, and they were usually referred to as animals. Ratramnus wrote that they were indeed human in essence though not in appearance and should be converted. (There are no stories of missionaries actually finding and communicating with any communities of dog-headed men.)

Ratramnus' most significant work on the body and blood was, at a later date, wrongly ascribed to someone else. When Berengar of Tours (died 1088) in a later century took up the topic, he used Ratramnus' work for his arguments, thinking it was the work of John Scotus Eriugena. John Scotus Eriugena was not an obscure person, but quite prominent, and we'll see why tomorrow.