ERIGENA, Joannes Scorus, a famous scholastic divine, was born about the beginning of the ninth century; but where, is a matter of dispute among authors. Bale and Pitts affirm that he was born at St David’s in Wales; Dempster, Mackenzie, and Henry, that he was a native of Scotland. Dempster contends that he was born in Ayr, and in order to suit the name to the hypothesis, he describes him as Joannes Airigena. Du Pin, Sir James Ware, and Dr Ledwich have with greater probability asserted that he was by birth an Irishman, Ireland being in those days called Scotia, and by the natives Erin. Various writers agree in relating that he travelled to Athens, where he acquired a competent knowledge of the Greek and oriental languages; and that he afterwards resided many years in the court of Charles the Bald, king of France, who, on account of his singular abilities, treated him as his intimate friend and companion. He slept frequently in the royal apartment, and was constantly admitted to the king’s table. “We may judge,” says a modern historian, “of the freedom which he used with Charles, by the following repartee. As the king and Scotus were sitting one day at table, opposite to each other, after dinner, drinking a cheerful glass, the philosopher having said something that was not quite agreeable to the rules of French politeness, the king in a merry humour asked him, Pray, what is between a Scot and ά sot ĩ To which he answered, “Nothing but [7:9:360]the table.”^[1. Henry’s History of Great Britain, vol. i. p. 344. ] During his residence with Charles, he wrote < several books of scholastic divinity, and was not so fortu-: nate as to escape the imputation of heterodoxy. On that < account the pope commanded Charles to send him to Rome, i but the king had too great a regard for his companion to I trust him with his holiness. One of the chief controver-ι sies in which Erigena was engaged, and with which the 1 pope was much offended, was concerning the real presence. His opinion of this weighty matter is expressed in these few words: “What we receive corporally is not the body of òur Lord, but that which feeds the soul, and is only perceived by faith.”

Whether Erigena ended his days in France is a matter of doubt. Some of our historians tell us that he quitted it in the year 864; and that, after residing about three years in Oxford, he retired to the abbey of Malmesbury, where his scholars stabbed him with their pen-knives. There is no foundation for this story. Probably he died about the year 874; but whether in France or England, is uncertain, and of little importance. Some have related that he was invited to England by King Alfred; but they have apparently confounded him with John abbot of Etheling, who was assassinated in 895; and to this mistake the various accounts concerning Erigena are to be attributed. Besides many other works, he composed the following. 1. Excerpta de Differentiis et Societatibus Groeci Latini-que Verbi. 2. De Divisione Natures lib. v. 3. De Proe-destinatione Dei. 4. De Visione Dei. 5. De Corpore et Sanguine Domini. 6. Ambigua S. Maximi, seu Scholia ejus in difficiles locos S. Gregorii Nazianzeni, Latine versa. 1. Opera S. Dionysii quatuor in Latinam linguam conversa. Most of these works have been printed. There is an edition, somewhat recent, of his books De Divisione Natures. Oxon. 1681, fol. The author was formerly denominated the Glory of the Greeks; an appellation to which, in the opinion of Montfaucon, he was not sufficiently entitled.^[2. Montfaucon Palaeographia Graeca, p. 42. ] For the age in which he lived, he however appears to have been a person of eminent learning; and his translation of Dionysius Areopagita has received no mean commendation from Huet.^[3. Huetius de Interpretatione, p. 154. ]