Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography/Volume 3/Roscellinus
ROSCELLINUS or RUZELIN, a celebrated scholastic doctor and canon of Compeigne, was born in Bretagne about the middle of the eleventh century. His name is principally known in connection with the controversy between the Nominalists and the Realists. The point on which this dispute turned was the nature or import of general notions or terms, such as man, animal, &c. It had its origin in a sentence in the writings of Porphyry, in which he declares himself unable to determine whether or not genera and species have a real and independent existence. It was debated with great animation, and often to the effusion of blood, throughout the middle ages—the whole scholastic philosophy being little more than an exhibition of the three rival opinions which aimed at its solution, namely, Realism, Nominalism, and Conceptualism. Realism was the older and more orthodox doctrine. It might be traced back to Plato. It held that ideas or general notions have some sort of reality independent of the mind which harboured them, and of the language in which they were expressed—that they are the laws or conditions of all reason and of all intelligible existence, and that they may be said, in some sense, to precede all created things, inasmuch as they are the grounds on which alone these latter are possible and conceivable. Nominalism was a protest against this opinion. It held that the ideas in question—the genera and species—have no reality whatever—that the words which express them are mere sounds (flatus vocis), that all existences are particular, and that the particular alone can be thought of. Conceptualism held that the genera and species have no reality in nature: but neither are they mere words: there is something corresponding to them in the mind—some conception of which the general term is the expression. Conceptualism is little more than a developed nominalism. It explained the general notions as obtained from particular instances by means of generalization and abstraction. Roscellinus was a strenuous advocate of nominalism; indeed he is usually regarded as its author. His adoption of this opinion exposed him to the charge of heresy; for, it was argued, if all existence be strictly particular, how can the doctrine of the Trinity, which holds the common nature of the three divine persons, be maintained? He was condemned by the council of Soissons (1092), and sought refuge in England, where he was treated with such coldness or hostility by Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, and the other dignitaries of the church, that he very soon returned to France, where he died probably about 1122. None of his writings are extant, so that his opinions can be gathered only from the works of his opponents.—(For Roscellinus and scholasticism generally, see Rousselot, Etudes sur la Philosophie du Moyen Age, 3 vols., 1840. Haurean, de la Philosophie Scholastique, 2 vols., 1850. Cousin, Fragments Philosophiques, Philosophie Scholastique, 1840.)—J. F. F.