Born probably in Ireland between 800 and 815; died probably about 891. A noted scholar of the Carlovingian period. He came to the court of Charles the Bald before 847, and became director of the palatial school, during the incumbency of which office his chief literary work was done. He is said by William of Malmesbury and others to have been invited to England by Alfred the Great (about 883?), to have been appointed teacher at the school of Oxford and abbot of Malmesbury, and to have been killed by his own pupils. His chief work was the translation of Dionysius Areopagita, and the consequent introduction of Neoplatonism into Western Europe. The most notable of his original productions is “De Divisione Naturæ” (edited by Gale 1681, Schlüter 1838, and Floss 1853).

  A man of clear understanding and amazing eloquence. He had long since, from the continued tumult of war around him, retired into France to Charles the Bald, at whose request he translated the “Hierarchia” of Dionysius the Areopagite, word for word, out of the Greek into Latin. He composed a book also, which he entitled “περὶ φύσεωυ περισμοῦ” or “Of the Division of Nature” extremely useful in solving the perplexity of certain indispensable inquiries, if he be pardoned for some things in which he deviated from the opinions of the Latins, through too close attention to the Greeks. In after time, allured by the munificence of Alfred, he came into England, and at our monastery, as report says, was pierced with iron styles of the boys whom he was instructing, and was even looked upon as a martyr.

  Erigena was the forerunner of the Pantheism of the Middle Ages, and of the heresy of Berengarius on the Eucharist; and his writings indirectly led the way to false theories on the relation of faith to science, on the nature of evil, and on predestination. From what has been said, it will scarcely be a matter of surprise that his works were in subsequent years frequently condemned. But, in justice to Erigena, it must be said that his writings possess a certain elevation and grandeur, a freshness and originality, and a brilliancy that dazzle and please. He was an elegant Greek scholar; was perfectly familiar with the writings and systems of Greek philosophers, and with the works of the Fathers of the Church, both Greek and Latin; combined skill in method with a luminous exposition; and was frequently so full of his subject that he resorted to the form of soliloquy to give it adequate expression. He was also the forerunner of the mysticism of the Schoolmen, or the union of contemplative piety with scientific theology, and led off in the controversy on Universals.

  He was a strange mysterious man, of profound thought, and as much raised above the doctors of his age by the boldness of his ideas, as Charlemagne above the princes of his day by the force of his will.

  In the ninth century Scotus Erigena, the most acute mind of his time, in his speculations upon the mutual relations of the world and God, unfolded a system that is indisputably pantheistic.

  Erigena is undoubtedly the most prominent and interesting literary character of the early Middle Age. He was a man of unremitting industry; he amassed such large stores of information as made him the wonder of his contemporaries; and he had great acuteness of mind. He was the greatest intellectual force of the ninth century; but though he had a bold and adventurous mind, he did not manifest thorough originality in his thinking. He seems to have had a special aptitude for gathering knowledge from many sources, and then constructing systems and theories; but in many places the logical consistency of his theories is marred by his desire to remain within the limits of Church teaching, and by the occasional ascendency of the spiritual over the metaphysical in his nature. He rendered immense service to the cause of learning in his own and the following centuries; and especially he conferred a great blessing on the world in becoming the leader of a line of brilliant and powerful thinkers, who fought out to a successful issue the right of man’s judgment and reason to pronounce upon matters of opinion and doctrine, in opposition to the absolute supremacy over reason and conscience claimed by the Church. Erigena was thus a Protestant born out of due time, and the forerunner of those who battled against spiritual assumption until the Reformation. He anticipated many of the metaphysical questions which have since agitated Europe, and which are being discussed now as earnestly as ever. His theories were framed and published when the world was not prepared to properly estimate or appreciate them, and therefore the heretical character of his philosophy was not fully recognized for some ages.

  If he deserves the name given to him sometimes as the father of Western scholastic philosophy, he earns it, not for his dogmatism, but by the honour due to him of being the first who taught distinctively and effectively the certain truth that between true religion and a true philosophy there is and can be no antagonism, but that they are one and inseparable.

  His learning rises far beyond the scientific level of the Carlovingian epoch. Besides Latin, he knew Greek and perhaps also Arabic. In addition to his knowledge of the Greek Fathers and Neo-Platonism, he possessed wonderful powers of speculation and boldness of judgment. He stands out like a high volcano on a perfectly level plane.

  The system of Scotus was unique in its character. It is an episode in the theological records of his time, where his very existence almost seems an anachronism…. In the character of his mind, as well as the drift of his system, Scotus anticipates modern thinkers whose creed is an ideal Pantheism.

  In some respects he may be accounted the herald of the movement of the eleventh century, but in more he is the last prophet of a philosophy belonging to earlier ages. When, in the first years of the thirteenth century, his books “de Divisione Naturæ” won a passing popularity through the teaching of Amalric of Bène, their pantheistic tendency was at once detected, and the work suppressed by Honorius III in 1225…. It was not John’s original writings, but his translations which exercised a notable influence on mediæval theology.