Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought and Learning/Appendix I
APPENDIX.
I. NOTE ON THE ORIGIN OF THE LEGEND RESPECTING JOHN SCOTUS’S TRAVELS IN GREECE.
It has been constantly repeated, as an old story to which modern critics cannot be expected to give credence, that John Scotus made a journey into Greece, and derived thence a part of the materials of his extraordinary learning. The story, however, is itself of entirely recent origin, and rests exclusively upon the authority of bishop Bale. His words are:
Ioannes Erigena, Brytannus natione, in Menevia Demetarum urbe, seu ad fanum Davidis, ex patricio genitore natus, a quibusdam scriptoribus philosophus, ab aliis vero, sed extra lineam, Scotus cognominatur. Duni Anglos Daci crudeles bellis ac rapinis molestarent, et omnia illic essent tumultibus plena, longam ipse peregrinationem Athenas usque suscepit, annosque quam plures literis Graecis, Chaldaicis, et Arabicis insudavit. Omnia illic invisit philosophorum loca ac studia, imo et ipsum oraculum solis quod Aesculapius sibi olim construxerat. In quo, abstemio cuidam humilimus servivit ut sub illo abdita sciret philosophiae secreta. Inveniens tandem quod longo quaesierat labore, in Italiam et Galliam est reversus.
The source of this passage is manifestly the following chapter in the Secretum Secretorum, otherwise known as the Liber Moralium de Regimine Principum, and vulgarly ascribed to Aristotle. I quote from the manuscript in the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, cod. cxlix. f. 4, adding in the margin a collation of the small Paris edition of 1520, fol. v.
Iohannes qui transtulit librum istum films Patricii, linguarum interpretator peritissimus et fidelissimus, inquit, Non reliqui locum nec templum, in quibus philosophi consueverunt componere et reponere sua opera secreta quod non visitavi; nec aliquem peritissimum quem credidi habere aliquam noticiam de scripturis philosophicis quem non exquisivi: quousque veni ad oraculum solis, quod construxerat Esculapides pro se. In quo inveni quemdam virum solitarium abstinentem, studentem in philosophia peritissimum, ingenio excellentissimum, cui me humiliavi in quantum potui, servivi diligenter, et supplicavi devote ut mihi ostenderet secreta scripta illius oraculi: qui mihi libenter tradidit. Et inter cetera desideratum opus inveni, propter quod ad illum locum iveram, et tempore longissimo laboraveram. Quo habito a ad propria cum gaudio remeavi. Inde referens gracias multis modis creatori, et ad peticionem regis illustrissimi laboravi: studens [inter liu., vel studiis] et transtuli primo ipsum de lingua Greca in Caldeam, et de hac in pro et de hac. Arabicam. In primis igitur, sicut inveni in isto codice, transtuli librum peritissimum Aristotelis, in quo libro respondetur ad peticionem regis Alexandri sub hac forma.
I have been directed to this passage by a remark of Anthony à Wood that 'the said John, whether Scotus, or Erigena, or Patricius (for by all those names he is written by authors), was one of great learning in his time, and much respected by kings for his parts. Roger Bacon, a great critic in authors, gives him by the name of Patricius, the character of a most skilful and faithful interpretor of the tongues, and to whose memory we are indebted for some true copies of certain works of Aristotle.' Wood then translates from the Corpus manuscript the passage, which I have given above in the original, and which he supposed to be by Roger Bacon because the glosses in the volume are ascribed to him. The extract however is taken not from the glosses, but from the text itself; a text which might as well have been quoted from one of the printed editions, so that Roger Bacon's name should not have been introduced into the matter at all. As it is, Bacon has been treated for centuries as the author of a fiction of which, so far as I can trace, the proper credit belongs to Bale. [1]Fabricius in fact long ago found this out: 'Baleus hanc versionem libri de regimine principum male tribuit Ioanni Scoto Erigenae;'[2] the real John was a Spaniard.