Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/289

 has been constantly repeated, as an old story to which modern critics cannot be expected to give credence, that John Scotus made a journey into Greece, and derived thence a part of the materials of his extraordinary learning. The story, however, is itself of entirely recent origin, and rests exclusively upon the authority of bishop Bale. His words are:

Ioannes Erigena, Brytannus natione, in Menevia Demetarum urbe, seu ad fanum Davidis, ex patricio genitore natus, a quibusdam scriptoribus philosophus, ab aliis vero, sed extra lineam, Scotus cognominatur. Duni Anglos Daci crudeles bellis ac rapinis molestarent, et omnia illic essent tumultibus plena, longam ipse peregrinationem Athenas usque suscepit, annosque quam plures literis Graecis, Chaldaicis, et Arabicis insudavit. Omnia illic invisit philosophorum loca ac studia, imo et ipsum oraculum solis quod Aesculapius sibi olim construxerat. In quo, abstemio cuidam humilimus servivit ut sub illo abdita sciret philosophiae secreta. Inveniens tandem quod longo quaesierat labore, in Italiam et Galliam est reversus.

The source of this passage is manifestly the following chapter in the Secretum Secretorum, otherwise known as the Liber Moralium de Regimine Principum, and vulgarly ascribed to Aristotle. I quote from the manuscript in the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, cod. cxlix. f. 4, adding in the margin a collation of the small Paris edition of 1520, fol. v.

Iohannes qui transtulit librum istum films Patricii, linguarum interpretator peritissimus et fidelissimus, inquit, Non