Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/38

20 Scots allowed too great a latitude in their learned ambition; that Alcuin treated them as rivals, almost as enemies to the truth. Nor is this view altogether groundless. There was without doubt a certain national jealousy subsisting between the English and the Scots; and Alcuin probably resented the predominance which the latter threatened to assume when, as an imaginative writer under Charles's grandson relates, almost all Ireland, regardless of the barrier of the sea, comes flocking to our shores with a troop of philosophers. There were also differences of ecclesiastical detail. Even in matters of doctrine more than once the Scots had given cause of offence: they had, it should seem, with their Greek learning, drawn more deeply from the wells of oriental theology than was approved by the cautious judgement of their age. One Clement, as saint Boniface reports, had denied the authority of the fathers and canons of the church, and besides holding some views dangerous to morality, had gone so far as to teach that Christ by his descent into hell delivered all its prisoners, the unbelieving with the righteous; and Virgil, bishop of Salzburg, had maintained the existence of dwellers in the antipodes 'in defiance of God and of his own soul,' because thus apparently he limited the sphere of the Saviour's work of redemption just as Clement had enlarged it.

There was clearly a repugnance between the plain, solid English temperament and the more adventurous, speculative genius of their neighbours. If it be said with truth now that the two peoples are incapable of understanding one another, it is manifest that they are not likely to have made that acquaintance at a comparatively early date after their first introduction. To hold however that Alcuin and the Irish stood apart in the matter of learning,