Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/68

50 and it was possibly this same connexion which gave the Irish scholar the first opportunity for making his value felt. The belief that the foundation dated from the Areopagite Dionysius, the earliest Athenian convert of saint Paul, was at this time universally held; there was as yet no Abailard to contest it. The renown of the abbey added dignity to its supposed author; and when writings ascribed to him with an equal credulity, were brought into the west, their purport aroused a natural curiosity, if only a translator could be found to reveal their treasures. Now Greek letters had never wholly died out in the Irish schools, and John had skill enough to furnish the required version. How far the expectations of the votaries of saint Denis were satisfied by the work, we do not know. Perhaps the obscurity of the translation limited the number of its readers; at any rate it does not appear to have excited much attention. When pope Nicholas the First objected to it and wrote to Charles the Bald demanding that the philosopher's work should be sent to him for correction, it was really not so much from suspicion of its contents as from hostility, in presence of an angry dispute between the churches, against anything Greek.

But the influence of the books upon the mind of the translator was momentous. The Timaeus of Plato he probably knew through the version of Chalcidius already; but now the bold forgery claiming the name of the Areopagite, which won currency in the sixth century, though the actual date of its writing may be a little earlier, placed him in possession of a metaphysical system ostensibly founded upon works of Plato which were unknown to western Christendom, and elaborated with a speculative