Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/85

Rh On the other hand, John has been claimed as in some sense the author of the scholastic debate of the earlier part of the middle ages. He was the first writer in the west who systematically adopted a regular syllogistic form of argumentation, and he was continually reproached with this peculiarity by antagonists such as Prudentius of Troyes. Forgotten for a while, the tradition should seem to have somehow revived, possibly through the studies of Roscelin, and by such an one to have been applied to trains of reasoning widely diverse from anything suspected by John Scotus. On one side he is reputed the father of nominalism, on the other he is thought to have exerted no slight influence on the theological speculations of Gilbert of La Porrée. When, further, we observe that the Division of Nature was associated in the condemnation of the heresy of Amalric of Bène, and that it was this work which called forth a bull of Honorius the Third in 1225, enjoining a strict search for all all copies of the book or of any parts of it, and ordering them to be sent to Rome to be solemnly burnt, – any one who knowingly kept back a copy being declared obnoxious to the sentence of excommunication and the brand of heretical depravity, – we shall be able to form some estimate of the variety and the intensity of danger which was subsequently discovered in the teaching of the Scot.

That such a judgement was warranted by the principles of correct catholic opinion will hardly be denied; but we must not omit to place beside it the fact that there was also literary tradition respecting John, so soon as his memory had been recalled to notice, of a gentler and more appreciative character. His translation of Dionysius was not only widely read, as we know from the numerous manuscripts of it that exist, but also commented on by a man of the saintly reputation of Hugh of Saint Victor, not to mention many others; and it is