INTRODUCTION

Eriugena, as he is now called, was a philosopher born in Ireland early in the ninth century. For a long time he was known as John Scotus Eriugena, a name given to him by Archbishop Ussher of Dublin in 1632. This latter title, however, is redundant (for both “Scotus” in the ninth century and “Eriugena” effectively mean “born in Ireland”), and has caused him to be confused with John Duns Scotus, who was also a philosopher, but was born in Scotland in the thirteenth century.

Ireland in the ninth century was a rural society where monasteries, sometimes with attached schools, were prominent settlements. These schools were famous for their learning, although the level of that learning—and whether it contained much of the secular literature of Greece and Rome—are still subjects of debate. What is clear is that Irish scholars from these schools were the most conspicuous group on the Continent in the ninth century who possessed a knowledge of Greek.

Probably from one of these schools, Eriugena made his way to Francia, the kingdom of Charles the Bald (823–877). In 843, that kingdom corresponded to modern-day France, though it excluded Brittany and all territory east of a line running roughly from Ostend to Marseilles; therefore, it can be referred to in a general way as France. It is sometimes suggested that Eriugena fled from the Vikings, who by the middle of the ninth century had begun to intensify their raids on Ireland and had plundered several important monasteries. At the same time, one must note that there had been a long tradition of peregrinatio original: "peregrination" religious wandering or pilgrimage from Ireland, and that Charles the Bald offered inducements to scholars who would work in his kingdom. At any rate, Eriugena appears to have arrived in France around 848.