INTRODUCTION

C.S. Lewis classified the work of Martianus Capella as mythological allegory, declaring that “this universe, which produced the bee-orchid and the giraffe, has produced nothing stranger than Martianus Capella.” Regardless, it remained the most popular schoolbook on the subject of the liberal arts—the trivium (Grammar, Dialectic, and Rhetoric) and the quadrivium (Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy, and Harmony)—for the better part of a thousand years. Eriugena, therefore, had knowledge of this wide array of disciplines. However, The Wedding of Philology and Mercury also significantly influenced the use of the Greek language and Neoplatonic ideas; Eriugena’s commentary shows an appreciable interest in these.

Eriugena also insisted that the liberal arts are innate in everyone and constitute an independent way to salvation. He proclaims that “no one enters into heaven except through philosophy.” His position was very similar to that of Augustine, one of his greatest sources, at the time of the latter's conversion in 386: “Authority (religion) could dispense altogether with reason; authority aided by reason was more desirable than authority alone; reason depended on some authority so that it might begin to operate; and reason could arrive at an understanding of what was taught by authority.” Augustine did not, however, maintain this position indefinitely.

In Martianus Capella, Eriugena also found—we do not know if for the first time—the Neoplatonic idea of reality as a progression outwards from the One, followed by a return to the One. This idea is foundational to Eriugena’s own great work, the Periphyseon, the study of nature, sometimes called “The Division of Nature.” Not surprisingly, Eriugena gained a reputation for being learned.

As a result of this reputation, Eriugena was invited by Hincmar, Bishop of Reims, to reply to the monk Gottschalk, who was alleged to hold the doctrine of double predestination—to heaven and to hell—as distinct from the doctrine held by Hincmar, which was that there was predestination of the elect only. Eriugena’s de praedestinatione (On Predestination) was produced in late 850 or early 851. His approach, as he emphasized, was based on reason. Strictly speaking, he contends, there is no predestination: there is only God. God is simple, and there can be no change in Him. Nothing is “fore”-known or “pre”-destined by Him. It was in accordance with God’s unchangeable law that some would be saved (“pre-destined”) and others would bring punishment upon themselves through the evil motion of their own free will. Eriugena accepts that Augustine used phrasing to the effect that God predestines the wicked to punishment, but he insists that Augustine also used phrasing that excluded this. Moreover, he contends that Augustine, by an antiphrasis (a figure of speech where a word is used in a sense opposite to its literal meaning), actually meant the opposite when he spoke of predestination to the death of the soul. Augustine himself frequently put forward a similar argument in his own controversies, an argument ultimately based on the ancient assumption that there was one