ERIGENA, e-riye-na, JOHANNES SCOTUS. A famous British philosopher, horn probably of Scotch parentage in Ireland (whence Scotus, Scotehman, and Erigena, Irish-born) within the first two decades of the ninth century. Very little is known regarding his history. He was called to France by Charles the Bald, who in trusted to him the translation of the writings ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite (q.v.), his publication of which, without prior submission. to the censorship of Rome, brought him into con ffict with Pope Nicholas I.; but evidently Charles stood by him, since he remained at the French Court till the death of the King in 877. Nothing is known of Erigena's history after that date. His philosophic opinions were those csf a Neo I'latonist rather than of a scholastic. He held that God is the essential ground of all things, from whom all things emanate, and into whom they return again. Nature he regarded as of four dis tinct sorts: first, the creative and uncreated; second. the creative and created; third, the non ereative and created; fourth, the non-ereative and non-created. The first is God the Creator; the second is the world of ideas existing in God's mind and giving rise to the world of space and time, which is the third; while the fourth is God again as t le final good and consummation of all development. The Church doctrine of creation out of nothing he completely changes by making 'nothing' mean reality in so far as un known. (Iod eternally creates the world out of Himself, the Unknown. In logic he was a real
ist; creation of individual things seems to be but logical subordination of the par ticular to the universal. As can be seen from this short account of his views, he was not an authoritarian, but insisted that "authority originates in reason, not reason in authority. All authority which is not confirmed by true reason seems to be weak," whereas reason "does not need to be corroborated by the seal of any authority." Erigena took active part in the theological polemic of his day, maintaining the spiritual presence in the Eucharist, and denying Gottschalk's (q.v.) twofold predestination, i.e. both to salvation and to damnation, and incon sistently admitting only the former. Erigena's main work, his De Dirisione Xe/nice, was con demned by the Provincial Council of Paris in 1210, and ordered by Honorius III in 1225 to he burned. It was first printed in Oxford, I651. De Dicing. Prcrdestinabone was printed first in Paris, 1650. His complete extant works were published by Floss (Paris, 1853). Consult : Christlieb, Lawn, nod Lchre des Johannes Scotus Erigcna (Gotha, 18601 ; Huber, Johannes Scotus Erigrna 1861) ; Buchwald, Der Logos bcgriff des Johannes Scotus Erigena (Leipzig, 1884) ; Wotschke, Fichte und Erigena 1896) ; Kaulieh, Geschickte der scholastischen Philosophic (Prague, 1863) ; Poole, Erigcna (London, 1896).