ἡ ἱερός νῆσος or νῆσος τῶν ἱερῶν, and the omission of the aspirate occurs also in the translations of Dionysius (see Floss, prœem., pp. xix, xx, and L. Traube, Abhandl. der phil. Cl. der kgl. Bayer. Akad. xix. 360, 1891). William of Malmesbury (Epist. ad Petrum) read the word as Heruligena, and traced John to Pannonia; while in modern times Bale made him a Briton born at St. David's, Dempster (Hist. Eccles. Gent. Scot. i. 42, ed. 1829) derived him from Ayr, and Thomas Gale (‘Testimonia’ prefixed to his edition of the books de Divisione Naturæ) from ‘Eriuven’ in the marches of Hereford. The combination of ‘Ioannes Scotus Erigena’ is perhaps not older than Ussher (Veterum Epistolarum Hibernicarum Sylloge, p. 57) and Gale; and Gale, who prints ‘Joanne Erigena Scoto’ at the head of the version of St. Maximus, is careful to avoid either combination in his text; nor is it found in Bale, Tanner, or Cave. At an earlier time, indeed, many writers believed John Scotus and John Erigena to be different persons, the former of whom, according to Trittheim (‘De Script. Eccles.’ in Opp. Hist. i. 252, ed. 1601), lived under Charles the Great, the latter under his grandson; while Dempster in 1627 made Erigena the earlier.
Of John's earlier life nothing historical is recorded. There is indeed a fable in Bale which tells how he travelled to Athens and studied Greek, Chaldee, and Arabic for many years, returning thence at last to Italy and Gaul; but Bale gives the clue by which to discover the real basis of his story, since he describes John as ‘ex patricio genitore natus.’ Now John, the son of Patricius, a Spaniard (see Fabricius, Biblioth. Græc. iii. 284, ed. Harles), was the translator of the ‘Secreta Secretorum’ currently attributed in the middle ages to Aristotle, and the facts above stated are a mere adaptation of the account which John the translator gives of his own wanderings. Anthony Wood (Hist. and Antiq. of the Univ. of Oxford, i. 39) carries back the identification of the two Johns to the authority of Roger Bacon, but simply because he used a copy of the ‘Secreta Secretorum’ which contained glosses by Bacon (MS. Corpus Christi Coll. Oxon. No. cxlix); the translator's narrative, however, naturally occurs not in Bacon's glosses, but in his own preface (see on the whole question Poole, Illustr. app. i.). The identification, with all that follows from it, is a modern invention.
Not less apocryphal is the story which makes John Scotus a disciple of Bede, and invited to Gaul by Charles the Great. Even Bale (ii. 24, p. 124) noticed the anachronism, though in another place (xiv. 32, pt. ii. pp. 202 seq.) he fell a victim to the confusion, attributing to the first John Scotus, whose existence is doubtful, works by the second, and referring to the former a statement which Simeon of Durham (‘Hist. Reg.’ § 9, in Opp. ii. 116, ed. Arnold) makes of the latter. The confusion reappears in many other writers (e.g. Possevinus, Apparatus Sacer, i. 939). A grosser variant of it, which made John Scotus one of the founders of the university of Paris, is older than Vincent of Beauvais, who cites it in his ‘Speculum Historiale,’ xxiii. 173, f. 308 (ed. Cologne, 1494). The story is, in fact, an enlargement of the legendary account which the monk of St. Gall (‘Gesta Karoli Magni,’ i. 1, in Pertz, Mon. Germ. Hist. ii. 731) gives of the ‘merchants of wisdom’ who came from Ireland, and were welcomed at the Frankish king's court, assisted by an interpolation in a rescript of Nicolas I (as given by Bulæus, Hist. Univ. Paris. i. 184), designed for the glorification of the antiquity of the university of Paris (Poole, p. 56 n. 3; Rashdall, Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, i. 273 n. 2).
John Scotus, who was born, no doubt, in the first quarter of the ninth century, went abroad before 847, since Prudentius, who by that year was already bishop of Troyes (Hist. lit. de la France, v. 241), speaks (De Prædest. ch. i. p. 1012) of their former intimate friendship, which was clearly formed when both were attached to the palace of king Charles the Bald, afterwards emperor. That John was employed there as a teacher, though possibly not even a clergyman (‘nullis ecclesiasticæ dignitatis gradibus insignitum,’ says Prudentius, ib. ch. ii. p. 1043), appears from the tract written in the name of the church of Lyons, and attributed to Florus the deacon, ‘adversus Joannis Scoti erroneas definitiones’ (Migne, cxix. 103 A); John is here referred to as ‘quasi scholasticus et eruditus’ (compare the rhetorical preface to John's book ‘De Prædestinatione,’ Migne, cxxii. 355 A, and the ‘Liber de tribus Epistolis,’ xxxix, in Migne, cxxi. 1052 A, commonly ascribed to Remigius of Lyons, but more probably written by Ebo of Grenoble; see H. Schrörs, Hinkmar Erzbischof von Rheims, p. 128, n. 11, Freiburg, 1884).
It was as a man of learning that John was requested by Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, and Pardulus, bishop of Laon—not, as Neander says (Hist. of Christian Religion, vi. 196, transl. Torrey 1852), by the king—to write a reply to the monk Gottschalk, whose exaggerated statement of the Augustinian doctrine of predestination had led to his
