Erigena, John the Scot

Erigena, John the Scot (or more correctly Eriugena), John the Scot (c.810–c.877), philosopher. An Irishman, he became head of the palace school at Laon.

His philosophy is an attempt to reconcile the Neoplatonist idea of emanation with the Christian idea of creation. In his Periphyseon or De Divisione Naturae, Erigena argues that Nature should be divided into four categories: first, Nature which is not created, but creates, i.e. God; secondly, Nature which is created and which creates, i.e. the world of primordial causes or Platonic ideas; thirdly, Nature which is created and which does not create, i.e. things perceived through the senses; and lastly, Nature which neither creates nor is created, i.e. God, to whom all things must in the end return. Thus the world was held to begin and end with God. In the 13th cent. this treatise was condemned. Erigena also wrote De Divina Praedestinatione against Gotteshalk. Having a knowledge of Greek which was exceptional for his time, he translated into Latin the writings of Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite and wrote a commentary on his Celestial Hierarchy, and translated works of Maximus the Confessor and Gregory of Nyssa.