Testimonies regarding John Scotus Erigena.

...he might commemorate. Some [poems] survive at the end of the Letter on the book of Predestination, others are found placed before the Areopagitica The works of Dionysius the Areopagite translated by Scotus. There are also several in Labbe’s Glossary, which Du Cange brought to light. Finally, several of Scotus's poems addressed to Charles Charles the Bald are found in a Benedictine Manuscript Codex at Cambridge; these, however, are perhaps the same as those which the Most Reverend Usher published long ago.

The following minor works are also attributed to Scotus Erigena; whether rightly or wrongly, I do not define.

9. Commentaries on Martianus Capella. Certain commentaries on Capella survive in a quite ancient hand in the library of the most distinguished man, J. Cotton, Baronet: but they are anonymous, and for several reasons, I think they should rather be ascribed to Dunchad, the Irish Bishop. The Library of our King Charles II preserves Dunchad.

10. Concerning the excerpts from Macrobius, the most celebrated James Usher of Armagh writes thus: Those excerpts which are circulated among the writings of Macrobius, concerning the differences and associations of the Greek and Latin verb etc., are also thought to belong to our John. So also judged P. Pithou, a man of renown. These things he says in the Irish Epistles.

11. On the Discipline of Scholars. Bulæus, in the History of the University of Paris, thinks this John wrote it. I, for my part, think otherwise. For although our Scotus was a barbarian and placed at the ends of the world, as Anastasius the Librarian speaks of him; certainly he was not so much of one as the author of that little book, unworthy? original: ἀνάξιος, nor would the men of his century ever have bestowed the name of Chrysostom meaning "Golden-Mouthed" upon him if they had thought him the creator of that writing.

12. Disputation with Theodore the Studite does not seem to be by this man, since Theodore was a little too old to have reached the times of our Scotus: furthermore, that disputation seems to have been held concerning the worship of images, which was indeed debated in the time of Alcuin and John Scotus of Melrose. Therefore, that disputation seems to belong to the latter rather than to Erigena: it is kept, as I hear, in the most famous Library of the King of the French.

13. The Morals of Aristotle: whether he translated this into Latin I do not know; I suspect that work belongs to another Scotus.

14. The version of the Aristotelian book, as it is thought, On the Government of Princes is not the work of this Scotus, whatever the over-confident Bale may have written. I have several copies of that book, and have seen others, in all of which the one who translated it is called John Patrick of Spain. Many believe this to be the same as the previous minor work, with whom I do not agree.

15. Commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories are anonymous? original: ἀνώνυμα works of this John, if I rightly understand Hugh and Peter of St. Victor. I know, however, that in a certain catalog of the Oxford Library, the same works bear the name of another Scotus. I pronounce nothing concerning these, the books not having been seen.

16. Dogmas of the Philosophers; 17. Homilies; 18. On the Faith against the Barbarians, are all works plainly unknown to me. If Bale had seen them, he surely would have included their opening lines as well.

19. On the Paraphrastic volumes, or commentaries on Dionysius, I have nothing beyond a thin suspicion; I suspect they are the scholia explanatory notes of John of Scythopolis, which Anastasius the Librarian translated; or the paraphrase of a certain Abbot of Vercelli.

Furthermore, regarding the judgment of ancient men concerning the writings of John Erigena, whoever desires to know should read the writers of the Gottschalk history,