Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/125

 condemnation by the second synod of Mentz in 848, and again by the synod of Quierzy, a year later. John produced his tract ‘De Prædestinatione’ early in 851 (see, p. 115, n. 24, cf. p. 117, n. 30). Opening with the announcement that true philosophy and true religion are identical, he urged against Gottschalk's assertion of predestination to evil that such a doctrine was incompatible with the unity of God, since unity of essence implies unity of will, and that, as evil is merely the negation of good, it lies outside God's knowledge; otherwise he would be the cause of it, since what he knows he causes. Predestination can therefore only be spoken of in the sense that God permits his creatures to act according to their free will; the only limit to the possibility of evil-doing is set by the order of the world, within which the creature moves and which he cannot overpass. John's reasoning was not well adapted to its purpose. His friends were startled by the unusual nature of his exposition; and his contribution to the controversy only brought upon him indignant and contemptuous reproofs. His views were condemned by the synod of Valence in 855, where his arguments were described (can. vi.,, Concil. Collect. ampliss. xv. 6) as ‘ineptas quæstiunculas et aniles pene fabulas Scotorumque pultes’ (‘Scots' porridge’); and the condemnation was repeated at the synod of Langres in 859 (can. iii. , xv. 537 seq.). Whether before or after the composition of his tract on predestination, it is probable that John also engaged in the controversy touching the Holy Communion which agitated the Frankish domain in the second quarter of the ninth century. In 844 Paschasius Radbertus, the advocate of what became the accepted catholic doctrine, presented a revised edition of his book, ‘De Sacramento Corporis et Sanguinis Christi,’ to King Charles; and in the course of the following years the question which he raised was eagerly discussed. That John did contribute to the controversy has been argued from the fact that a treatise on the subject bearing his name was condemned by the council of Vercelli in 1050 (, de Corpore et Sanguine Domini, iv.,, cl. 413 seq.); but this treatise is generally believed to be the work of Ratramnus of Corbie. Still, the fact that a work very likely not John's was attributed to him is an indication that he was known to have taken part in the controversy against Paschasius; and the reference made to his teaching on the subject (, de Prædest. xxxi,, cxxv. 296), as well as the title of Adrevald's book ‘de Corpore et Sanguine Christi contra ineptias Joannis Scoti,’ points in the same direction (cf. , Acta Sanctorum O.S.B., sec. iv. 2, præf. pp. xliv–xlviii, lxiv–lxvii; and , Hinkmar Erzbischof von Rheims, p. 103 n. 2, Bonn, 1863).

A further trace of John's activity at the court of Charles the Bald is furnished by his translations from the Greek. The growing fame of the abbey of St. Denys had added a new interest to the name of Dionysius the Areopagite; and when the writings falsely ascribed to him were presented by Michael the Stammerer to Lewis the Pious in 827 (, Rescript. ad Imper. Ludov., iv.;, cvi. 16), there was a natural desire to have the means of reading them. At length, by the command of Charles the Bald, John Scotus made a translation (under the name of Ioannes Ierugena) of the books ‘De Cælesti Ierarchia,’ ‘de Ecclesiastica Ierarchia,’ ‘de Divinis Nominibus,’ ‘de Mystica Theologia,’ and ‘Epistolæ.’ To the whole he subjoined a set of verses in which he extolled the glories of Greece by comparison with those of Rome (Opp. p. 1194). Whether owing to these verses, in the presence of an angry dispute between the pope and the patriarch of Constantinople, or to the Neo-Platonic complexion of the work itself, the orthodoxy of the book was doubted, and Nicolas I ordered that it should be sent to him for approval. The date of this letter, which is only preserved as a fragment in the ‘Decretum’ of Ivo of Chartres, iv. 104 (, clxi. 289 seq.), is quite uncertain (, Registr. Pontif. Roman. No. 2833, ed. 2), and it has been placed variously in 859 (, p. 27), 861–2 (, p. 1026), and 867 (, cxix. 1119).

These are almost the only facts known to us on contemporary authority concerning John's life. The inference from a letter to Charles the Bald, written by Anastasius ‘the librarian’ (, cxxix. 739 seq.), that he was already dead in 875, is not justified by its language (cf., pp. 52 seq.); indeed, some verses by the Scot enable us to guess that he was still in Francia in 877, the year of his protector's death (Opp. pp. 1235 seqq.; cf. , p. 120). It is not until the twelfth century that we obtain from the writings of William of Malmesbury a fuller notice of him. William describes in the ‘Gesta Pontificum,’ v. 240 (pp. 392 seq., ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton), the honour in which the sage—a man little in person and of a merry wit—was held by Charles the Bald, and the intimacy with which they were associated, both in serious studies and in the familiar intercourse of daily life. In this