Life
?810-877 [var. 1180; ‘Irish-born’, occas. Erigena; err. Scotus
Erigena, and occas. Duns Scotus or Scottus]; served at court of Charles
the Bald, c. 847 [var. Court of Charles II, c.851]; translator (858) and
interpreter of neo-Platonic theology of Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite,
De Praedestinatione, condemned at Council of Valence, 855, and
described as ‘pultes Scotorum’ (‘Irish porridge’);
De Divisione Naturae (c.866); De Divisione condemned by
Honorius III, 1225; placed in Index, 1685; commentary on the Celestial
Hierarchy of Dionysius; according to tradition, he was killed by students
when abbot of Malmesbury, though more likely he never left France; Bishop
Ussher referred to him as Scotus Erigena in his Veterum epistolarum
Hibernicarum sylloge (Dublin 1632); there was a life by John Colgan,
who first claimed him as Irish (1655); his works were edited H. J. Floss
in Migne’s Patrologia Latina; There is a modern edition of
Periphyseon edited by Jeaneau (?1998); the standard biographer
is James O’Meara. DNB DIW DIB OCEL FDA OCIL
Works
Johannes Duns Scotus [sic], Opera Omnia, ed. Luke Wadding et al.,
12 vols. (1637; rep. Hildsheim: Olms 1968-69); Periphyseon (On
the Division of Nature), trans. Myra Uhlfelder, Bobbs-merrill USA
1976; Michael W. Herren, ed., Iohannis Scotti Eriugenae ‘Carmina’
[Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 12] (School of Celtic Studies 1993),
viii, 179pp. [SCS is the ‘statutary organisation for project research
and publication in Irish and Celtic Studies’]
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Criticism
J. J. O’Meara, Eriugena (Cork: Mercier 1969).
Dermot Moran, ‘Wandering from the Path’, in Crane Bag Book of Irish Studies (1982), pp.244-50.
rep. of same in Crane Bag, 2. 1&2 (1978).
Dermot Moran, ‘Nature, Man, and God in the Philosophy of John Scottus [sic] Eriugena,’ in Richard Kearney, ed., The Irish Mind (1985).
Dermot Moran, The Philosophy of Eriugena (C[ork] UP 1989).
John J. O’Meara, Studies in Augustine and Eriugena, ed. Thomas Halton (Washington: Catholic UP 1993), 375pp.
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Notes
W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (IAP
1976; 1984), cites commentaries on Martinus Caella’s De Nuptiis
Mercurii et Philologiae (between 410 and 439) by Irishmen Dunchad,
Eriugena, and Martin of Laon [16]. Further, Eriugena referred to Ulysses’s
recognition by his dog [Argus] in De Divisione Natura, 3, 738C
(Migne) [88]. Eriugena, asked by Charles the Bald with whom he was sitting
at dinner, ‘Quid distat inter sottum et Scottum?’, answered
courageously, ‘Tabulum tantum’ [‘the table’] [174].
Eriugena, known as Johannes Scottus; The Division of Nature (De
Divisione Naturae), composed 862-66; neo-Platonist and Christian;
based in his study of Chalcidius’ Latin translation and commentary
on Plato’s Timaeus and his own translations of ‘Dionysius the
Aropagite’ and Maximus Confessor, as well as St. Augustine. De Divisione
takes the form of a dialogue between teacher and student; classifies phenomena
in four categories, that which creates but is not created; that which
is created and creates; that which is created and does not create; that
which does not create and is not created.’ Stanford comments on its
fluent Latin style, after Bieler. Quot, ‘Sicut ergo lapis ille qui
dicitur magnetes, quamuis naturalli sua uirtute ferrum sibimet propinquans
d e attrahit nullo modo ut hoc faciat se ipsum mouet aut a ferro aliquid
patitur quod ad se attrahit, it rerum omnium causa omnia quae ex se sunt
ad se ipsam reducit sin ullo sui motu, sed sola suae pulchritudinis uirtute.
[‘... so the Cause of all things leads back to itself all things
that derive from it without any motion of its own but sole by the power
of its beauty’; 192-93.] Further: Besides his obvious veneration
for classical Greek thinkers, he apparently admired contemporary scholarship
of 9th c. Constantinople; an epigram to the effect that the that city
is the new Constantinople has been attributed to him, ‘Constantinopolis
florens nova Roma vocatur./Moribus et muris Roma vetusta cadis.’
According to William of Malmesbury, he actually went to Athens ( De
Gestis Pontificum Anglorum, 5, p.240; cf. C. H. Slover, ‘William
of Malmesbury and the Irish’, in Speculum 2, 1927, 268-83).
His admirers included [Pope] Sylvester II. Archb. Ussher mentions him
in Veterum Epistolarum Hibernicarum Sylloge (1632), and probably
presented two MSS of writings by him to the Library of TCD; Sir James
Ware included him in his account of the writers of Ireland. In the late
19th c., William Larminie made a partial translation of the De Divisione
Naturae, still unpublished [in 1984]. [Stanford, 193-94]. Bibl., The
Mind of Eriugena, ed. J J. O’Meara and L Bieler (Dublin 1973),
papers of the Dublin Colloquium of 1970. [notes, 200] Bibl., J. J. O’Meara,
Eriugena (Cork 1969); I. P. Sheldon-Williams and L Bieler, eds.,
Ioannis Scotti Eriugena Periphyseon (De divisione Naturae). Liber Primus
(Dublin 1968); Liber Secundus (Dublin 1972), the translation supplied
in notes by by Sheldon-Williams; a third vol. to follow. ALSO L. Bieler,
‘Remarks on Eriugena’s Original Latin Prose’, op. cit.,
n.34.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field
Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 1, selects from Lumine Sidereo Donysius
Auxit Athenas; Hellinas Troasque Suos Cantarat Homerus; De
Divisione Naturae; and Periphyseon, etc. BIOG & COMM, incl.
M. Lapidge and R. Sharpe, A Bibliography of Celtic-Latin Literature
400-1200 (RIA Dictionary of Medical Latin from centic Sources, ancillary
Publications 1 (RIA 1985, nos. 695-713, pp.183-92; also several Latin
and French sources, incl. E Jeauneau, Jean Scot, commentaire su l’évangile
de Jean, Source chrčtiennes, CLXXX (Paris: Edition du Cerf 1972).
James O’Meara, Eriugena (Mercier 1969), lists H. Hovelaque [professeur au lycée Saint-Louis], Anthologie de la Littérature irlandaise des Origines au XXe siècle (Paris Libraire Delagrave 1924), extracts: sur la raison; sur la procession des idées' son panthéisme; les cause premiers (pp.82-82).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco): 2002