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From Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought and Learning, by Reginald Lane Poole; New York: Macmillan Company, 1920; pp. 271-285.
IT has been constantly repeated, as an old story to which modern critics cannot be expected to give credence, that John Scotus made a journey into Greece, and derived thence a part of the materials of his extraordinary learning. The story, however, is itself of entirely recent origin, and rests exclusively upon the authority of bishop Bale. His words are:
The source of this passage is manifestly the following chapter in the Secretum Secretorum, otherwise know as the Liber Moralium de Regimine Principum, and vulgarly ascribed to Aristotle. I quote from the manuscript in the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, cod. exlix. f. 4, adding in the margin a collation of the small Paris edition of 1520, fol. v.
I have been directed to this passage by a remark of kAnthony à Wood that ‘the said John, whether Scotus, or Erigena, or Patricius (for by all those names he is written by authors), was one of great learning for his time, and much respected by kings for his parts. Roger Bacon, a great critic in authors, gives him by the name of Patricius, the character of a most skilful and faithful interpreter of the tongues, and to whose memory we are indebted for some true copies of certain works of Aristotle.’ Wood then translates from the Corpus manuscript the passage, which I have given above in the original, and which he supposed to be by Roger Bacon because the glosses in the volume are ascribed to him. The extract however, is taken not from the glosses, but from the text itself; a text which might as well have been quoted from one of the printed editions, so that Roger Bacon’s name should not have been introduced into the matter at all. As it is, Bacon has been treated for centuries as the author of a fiction of which, so far as I can trace, the proper credit
belongs to Bale. l
l Fabricius in fact long ago found this out: ‘Baleus hanc versionem libri de regimine principum male tribuit Ioanni Scoto Erigenae;’1 the real John was a Spaniard.
THE statement that John Scotus retired into England after the death of Charles the Bald has been the subject of much discussion, and, as usually happens, the dispute has been complicated by a good deal of what is no real evidence, and by much confusion of the real and the false. the following extracts will put the reader in possession of the materials on which to form an opinion with respect to at least an important section of the enquiry.2
m De reb. gest.
Aelfe., Mon. hist.
Brit. 1. 487 B;
n ed. advocarit.Bishop Asser of Sherborne says that King Alfred
This record stands between the years 884 and 886, but in a digression of a general character relating more or less to Alfred’s whole reign.3 Florence of Worcester, in quoting the passage, placed it as early as 872, and the only fact
that we can presume as to its real date is that it probably refers to the state of peace subsequent to the treaty of Wedmore in 878. Afterwards, under the date of 886, occurs the famous passage describing the quarrel that arose at Oxford between Grimbald and his companions who had come there with him, and the old scholastices of the town. It was natural to suppose that these companions included that John already mentioned; and such is the inference drawn in the Hyde annals, a. 886, according to which, o
o Lib. monast.
de Hyda 41,
ed. E. Edwards,
1866. anno secundo adventus sancti Grimbaldi in Angliam, incepta est universitas Oxoniae. . . . legentibus . . . Grimbaldo and others, the list ending with in geometria et astronomia docente Ioanne monacho et collega sancti Grimbaldi. Since, however, the passage in Asser relating to Oxford is known to be a modern interpolation, and since the Book of Hyde is a production not earlier than Edward the Third’s reign, the evidence on this head may be wisely ignored. It is only necessary to add that once certain witness to the connexion shown by the passage first quoted from Asser, remains in king Alfred’s preface to his translation of saint Gregory’s Pastoral Care, which he says he learned p
p T. Wright,
per., 400; 1842. of Plegmund my archbishop, and of Asser my bishop, and of Grimbold my mass-priest, and of John my mass-priest.
2. At a long interval from the mention of the arrival of the two scholars, and in what is q
q Mon. hist.
Brit. 1., pref.,
pp. 28 sq.
r Pp. 493 c-
494 E. regarded as a quite distinct section of his book, Asser relates, a. 887, Alfred’s foundation of the monastery at Athelney, and rdescribes its first abbat:
Asser proceeds to relate the attempted murder of abbat John by the servants of two Gaulish monks in the house.
They waylaid him in church, and fell upon him with swords so that he nearly died. In regard to this passage it may be argued from the specification scilicet Ealdsaxonem genere4 that the author is introducing a new person whom he wishes to distinguish from the John already mentioned; at any rate Asser’s words do not necessarily identify John the Saxon with John the comrade of Grimbald. It is, however, commonly held that s
schichte 3. 938.the latter inference has a predominant probability. The two stories we find repeated by t
t Chron., a. 872.
887, Mon. hist.
Brit. I. 557 E.
563 A. Florence of Worcester without any attempt at combining them.
3. Hitherto we have had no mention of John Scotus. It is evident that he may be the John whose name is associated with that of Grimbald; but it is impossible that he be John the Saxon. To combine the three was first attempted in the spurious compilation, — ‘undoubtedly a monkish forgery,’ as it is described by u
u Descr. Catal.
&c., 2. 61;
1865. sir Thomas Duffus Hardy, — which goes under the name of abbat Ingulf of Croyland. Its author invents a mode of reconciling the different nationalities by making John not an Old Saxon, but simply summoned from Saxony.
The forger has merely confused Asser by importing into his narrative the name of John Scouts, which he knew, evidently, from the story long before made popular by William of Malmesbury.276
4. This story is told by William in three separate works, in the y
y lib. ii. 122
pp. 189 sq.
ed. T. D. Hardy.
z lib. v. 240
pp. 392 sq., ed.
Hamilton. Gest Regum, the zGesta Pontificum, and in a letter addressed to his friend Peter. the second of these accounts also rëappears, nearly word for word, in what is known as the Second Chronicle of Simeon of Durham; but this has no claim to be regarded as an independent authority.5 Of William’s three narratives, that contained in the epistle to Peter, which is entirely occupied with the subject of John Scotus, is the most complete, and I give it here as printed by Gale, e. cod. Thuaneo ms., among the Testimonia prefixed to his edition of the De Divisione Naturae.6 From the point in the course of this letter, at which William’s other words introduce the narrative about John Scotus, and thenceforward run parallel with it, I give at the foot of the page a collation of them as well.
Sed et Anastasius de insigni sanctitate adhuc viventem collaudat his verbis ad Carolum.
[Here follows an extract from Anastasius the librarian, to which William adds:]
Alternant ergo de laudibus eius et infamia diversa scripta, quamvis iampridem laudes praeponderaverint. Tantum artifici valuit eloquentia ut magisterioeius manus dederit omnis Gallia. Verum si qui maiorem audaciam anhelant, ut synodus quae tempore Nicolai papae secunti Turonis congregata est, non in eum sed in scripta eius duriorem sententiam praecipitant. Sunt ergo haec fere quae controversiam pariunt.
5. This is the account of John Scotus’s end which was received throughout the middle ages. The little that
a Spec. histor.
b Chron. xlvi
114. Vincent of Beauvais, to take but a single instance, says about him, is all derived, including the epitaph, through the channel of bHelinand, from William of Malmesbury. William has, in common with Asser, just three points, (a) that John was a learned man, (b) that he was invited from Gaul by king Alfred, and (c) that he taught in England; in other words exactly what Asser relates about John the companion of Grimbald, with the exception of the notice that he was priest and monk: it has nothing corresponding to what he says of John the Saxon. Apart from the question of nationality, the latter was made abbat of Athelney, and his life was attempted by the servants of two Gaulish brethren of the monastery; whereas John the Scot, according to William of Malmesbury, went not to Athelney but to Malmesbury; he was not abbat, simply a teacher; was not wounded at the instigation of the monks, but was actually killed by the boys whom he taught. The only point in common between the two is the name John.47
6. With the epitaph quoted by William as commemorating this sanctus sophista Ioannes, we may connect a notice which is contained in a chronicle referred to by c
c Hist. univ.
Paris. 2. 443. du Boulay as the Historia a Roberto Rege ad Mortem Philippi I: —
d De la phil.
scol. I. 174
sq.; Hist. de
la phil. scol.
I. 244-247. M. Hauréau rejects the comparison with the Malmesbury inscription, but he is in the meshes of the old snare about John the Saxon. His caution in refusing to apply the inscription as a help to explain the Paris chronicle will be respected; but when he urges on other grounds that 281 the Johannes ‘sophista’ of the latter is identical with John Scotus, we are entitled to use this conversely as evidence for the credibility of William of Malmesbury’s account. M. Hauréau’s identification has since received powerful support from the arguments of e
e Gesch. der
Abendl. 2. 20-
31 [22-33]. Dr. von Prantl;48 and if their conclusion be accepted, it is surely reasonable to claim this John Scotus ‘the Sophist’ as the same person with his contemporary John the Sophist, whose epitaph William records; especially when the latter, no doubt repeating an old tradition of the monastery, expressly identifies this sophist with the Scot.49 The extract in du Boulay is therefore a piece of evidence that converges with those in the preceding paragraphs to one centre. We may or may not believe all that William says, but this we may affirm, that his narrative is self-consistent and intelligible, and that it is incompatible with, and contradictory to, the whole concoction with which the false Ingulf has entrapped our modern critics.50
7. Mabillon and others have objected that John Scotus could hardly have visited England so late as after the year 880. But there is no reason, because he is known to have gone to France before 847, to conclude that he must have been born before 815. But even should we accept an earlier date for John’s birth, it does not follow as a matter of course that f
f Huber 117. ’since, according to Asser’s account, he must have 282 gone to England as late as 884, he must have been called by Alfred at an age when one can look forward to little or no future activity as a teacher,’ and when he could hardly have had much inclination to change his country and enter upon new surroundings. Setting aside the fact that Asser’s notice, if indeed it refers to John Scotus, is not placed under any particular date, it is evident that once cannot assert the impossibility of a man’s working power lasting until or beyond his seventieth year. At the same time there is no positive ground for excluding the alternative date for John Scotus’s birth, which would make him fifty-three in 878 or fifty-nine in 884.
8. Another question arises about John’s ecclesiastical position. Here we must note that William of Malmesbury makes no mention of him as anything but a plain teacher. It is true that Staudenmaier, whose conclusion on this head is repeated by the g
g Christlieb 43,
45; Huber III,
118. later biographers, insists that William’s John was abbat; but the only reason he can giveis that the historian relates the destruction of John’s tomb in connexion with Warin de Liro’s sacrilegious treatment of past abbats of Malmesbury. The passage is as follows:
Reading this extract carefully, it should appear that we 283 have just as much right to infer that William is carefully distinguishing between John and the abbats, as that he intends to identify them. It was Ingulf who first made John Scotus an abbat.
Returning then to the John, the companion of Grimbald, in the narrative of Asser, we find him described as ‘priest and monk.’ Now all we know about John Scotus’s clerical position from contemporary evidence is negative. Prudentius of Troyes, indeed, ridicules him for setting himself up as a disputant in a grave controversy, being i
i De praedest. ii.
1043 A. barbarum et nullis ecclesiasticae dignitatis gradibus insignitum. But it is plain that his not holding nay rank in the church, which is all the words need mean, does not involve the consequence that John was not ordained. k
k v. supra,
p. 126.Abaillard, for instance, had, in all probability, only minor orders until he was in middle life; yet, he afterwards was appointed abbat. It is no doubt the fact that John is never styled ‘priest’ or ‘monk’ by any of his opponents: nor does he ever describe himself as such, after the prevailing fashion, in his writings. but the latter circumstance, at least, has a very natural explanation: he desired to rank as a philosopher, not as a priest. This is indeed, as l
l Gesch. der
im Mittelalter `1.
51. Dr. Reuter observes, a salient characteristic of his position in the history of Christian thought; and it would be readily accepted by his enemies as a confirmation of their judgement that he as a heretic. We are not to expect that they would signalise, if they were aware of, his priestly calling.
9. On the other hand, it is a mistake to infer from the title of martyr, as to which even William of Malmesbury, m
m supra, p.
278 ii. 20. in one of his accounts, expressed a doubt, an identification with another John Scouts, who held a place in the martyrologies, at least in England and France, until 1586, when I presume it was discovered that the philosopher was unqualified for the dignity.51 It is strange that n
n Pp. 147 sqq. Staudenmaier and others who repeat the statement 284 have not observed o
o Actt. 88. O.s.
Bened. 4 *2( 513.
p Adam. Brem,
burg eccl. pontif.
iii. 20, 30,
Pertz 7. 343.
q Hist. of Lat.
Christ. 4. 333. Mabillon’s refutation of it. There is no doublt that the martyr who was commemorated on the 14th of November was pJohn Scotus, bishop of Mecklenburg, who was killed on that day in 1066.52
10. Milman attempts to select from the various opinions with regard to John Scotus’s retirement into England. qHe thinks (a) that John fled into England ‘under the general denunciation of the church and the pope,’ apparently following William of Malmesbury, here disregarding the long interval between John’s participation in the Gottschalk controversy and the earliest possible date for his withdrawal from France;(b) ‘he is said to have taken refuge in Alfred’s new university of Oxford.’ In a note we read that ‘the account of his death is borrowed by Matthew of Westminster from that of a later John the Saxon, who was stabbed by some monks in a quarrel,’ which statement is evidently taken directly from Guizot’s Cour d’Histoire moderne, 3. 174 sq. (1829). ’The flight to England,’ adds Milman, ’does not depend on the truth of that story.’ The writer known as Matthew of Westminster however did not borrow his story about John Scotus’s death from an account of ‘a lter John the Saxons,’ but took his matter directly from William of Malmesbury.53 Besides, we have already seen the entire dissimilarity of the stories about John Scotus and John the Saxon.
11. In conclusion, if Asser intends to distinguish John the Old Saxon, the abbat of Athelney, from John the companion of Grimbald, it is possible that the latter is John Scotus. William of Malmesbury may have drawn a
fact or two from what is said about the latter, but his account is altogether irreconcileable with the notice of the Old Saxon. It is the combination of the two persons mentioned by Asser, derived from the spurious authority of Ingulf, that has misled the modern critics, and induced most of them to discredit the narrative of William of Malmesbury, as though it depended upon that late forgery. William’s account may therefore be judged by itself, and accepted or rejected just as we may rate the historian’s general credibility: there is no reason for excluding these particular passages from that respect which r
r cf. Hardy 2.
156, 164. those scholars who know William best are ready to pay to his honest, conscientious labours.54
1 Gale also, in the Testimonia prefixed to his edition of the De divisione naturae, lays the mistake to Bale’s charge, but without detecting its source.
2 [Since this book was first published William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum has been reëdited by bishop Stubbs, 1889, and Asser’s life of King Alfred by Mr. W. H. Stevenson, Oxford, 1904.]
3 [Bishop Stubbs, pref. to William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum. 2 p. xlv., gives evidence to show that Grimbald came to England from Flanders not earlier than 892; but Mr. Stevenson, Asser 308 sq., points out that Grimbald was not an uncommon name at his monastery of Saint Bertin, so that it is not certain that the two persons are the same.]
4 Ealdsaxo means a Saxon of continental Saxony as distinguished from a Saxon of England. Gregory the Second, when recommending saint Boniface to his future converts, addressed the letter ‘universo populo provinciae Altsaxonum,’ Jaffé, Biblioth. Rer. Germ. 3. 81; and Asser himself elsewhere mentions ‘regionem antiquorum Saxonum quod Saxonice dicitur Ealdseaxum,’ p. 484 A.
5 The passage is not reprinted in the edition of Simeon in the Monumenta historica Britannica: see vol. i. 684 note b. It may be read in Twysden’s Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores decem 148 sq., 1652 folio [and in T. Arnold’s edition of Simeon’s Works, 2. 115-117: 1885]. On the character of the Second Chronicle see the preface to the Monumenta, p. 88, and Hardy’s Descriptive Catalogue, 2. 174 sqq.
6 [It is also found in the Royal MS. append. 85 f. 25 b in the British Museum, which was written in the eleventh or twelfth century and is certainly not autograph, as is asserted in the index to Hamilton’s edition of the Gesta pontificum, 531 b. In the first edition of this book I printed a collation of this manuscript, but the text has since been published from it by Stubbs in his preface to the Gesta regum, 1. pp. cxliii-cxlvi.]
7 At this point the other narratives begin. The following is the text of the Gesta pontificum with which I collate that of the Gesta regum: Huius tempore venit Angliam [G R Hoc tempore creditur fuisse] Iohannes Scottus, vir perspicacisx ingenit et multac facundiae, qui dudum relicta patri [G R dudum increpantibus undique bellorum fragribus in] Frantiam ad Karolum Calvum transierat. A quo magna, &c. The Gesta regum proceeds at once to the sentence beginning in the text of the Epistle with the words Regis ergo [G R euius: G P Caroli ergo] rogatu.
8 G P omit ut alias dixi.
9 G P et mensae et..
10 The rest of this sentence is wanting in the Gesta pontificum, which contain instead the famous stories about the Scot and the sot, and the little fishes and the fat clerks.
[These anecdotes can be found in Roger de Hoveden translated by Henry T. Riley, London: H. T. Bohn; 1853, pp. 53-53, The passage is here on Elfinspell. He mentions separately John the Old Saxon, an “abbat, priest and monk,” on page here as well. — Elf.Ed.]
11 G R and G P Dionysii Areopagitae in Latinum de Graeco, verbum e verbo.
12 G P add littera.
13 G R omit quo fit to nostra.
14 G R and G P etiam.
15 G P Perifison merimnoi..
16 G R propter perplexitatem necessariarum quaestionum solvendam; G P propter perplexitatem quarundam quaestionum solvendam.
17 G R aliquibus.
18 G R prefix in.
19 G R and G P acriter.
20 After intendit the Gesta regum go on directly with Succedentibus annis munificentia Elferdi allectus, venit Angliam, et apud monasterium nostrum a pueris quos docebat graphiis, ut fertur, perforatus, etiam martyr aestimatus est: quod sub ambiguo and iniuriam sanctae animae non dixerim, cum celebrem eius memoriam sepulchrum in sinistro latere altaris et spitaphii prodant versus, scabri quidem et moderni temporis lima carentes, sed ab antiquo non adeo deformes. The verses follow. The Gesta pontificum omit the passage Fuit multae to occulebat, but from that point agree closely with the text of the Epistola.
21 G P quare.
22 For et scripsit, G P scripsitque.
23 After enim G P insert revera.
24 G P perfision.
25 For multorum aestimatione, G P nisi diligenter discutiantur.
26 G P catholicorum.
27 G P abhorrentia.
28 G P insert particeps.
29 G P fuisse cognoscitur.
30 So G P as quoted by Gale: Hamilton’s edition by error has quidem.
31 G P inditio debuit.
32 G P dicatur.
33 G P omit this sentence.
34 G P omit ut.
35 G P omit .
36 G P omit Angliam.
37 G P regis.
38 G P Melduni.
39 G P foratus.
40 G P here insert inhonora sepultura.
41 G P in beati Laurentii ecclesia.
42 For in maiorem cum, G P cum n maiorem. [In the archetype of G P, preserved at Magdalen College, Oxford, cod. 172 p. 185, cum is inserted above the line.]
43 G P ponentes [in the Magdalen MS. corrected from positum].
44 For his praedicaverunt versibus martyrem, G P his martirium eius versibus praedicaverunt.
45 G P Conditur hoc: G R Clauditur in.
46 G R and G P iam vivens.
47 The last two lines are in the Gesta regum as follows:
Martyrio, tandem Christi conscendere regnum
Quo, meruit, regnant sancti per secula cuncti.
In the Gesta pontificum:
Martyrio tandem Christi conscendere regnum
Quo, meruit, regnant cuncti per secula sancti.
Here the two narratives end, so far as the Scot is concerned.