for more than they cared to acknowledge, to the materials
provided them in the works of the Scot. But in the
dark age that followed, those writings seem to have been
almost unknown. Early in the tenth century, indeed,
we meet with an s extract from a poem apparently of
John’s composition, and a passage from the Division
of Nature is cited in a theological treatise written a little
later ;[1] but in neither case is the source of the quotation
indicated. Then, again, when the Scot s book On the
Body and Blood of Christ obtained a sudden notoriety
in the dispute raised by Berengar of Tours on the nature
of the sacrament, the importance attached to his authority
by the opponent of tr an substantiation is valuable as
evidence of the power that his name still possessed ; but
it is nearly certain that the h work to which Berengar
appealed, and which was burnt by the council of Vercelli,
was the production not of John but of his contemporary
the monk Ratramnus. A solitary trace of John s influence
may be found in the fact that, probably through some
glosses of his, the Saturicon of Martianus Capella soon
came to take once more that recognised place in the
schools which it had held centuries earlier in the dark
days of k Gregory of Tours ; but the acceptance of this
meagre compendium only shews how incapable his heirs
were of appreciating the treasure he had left them in his
own works. [2]
- ↑ In the tract De corpore et sanguine Domini commonly as- cribed to Gerbert. See Carl von Prantl, Geschichte der Logik im Abendlande 2. 57 [58] n. 227; 1861: cf. Huber 434. Neither of these writers adverts to the doubt which hangs over the authorship of the book. See below p. 77 n. 12.
- ↑ It has been supposed that the book, of which the full title is De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, a tasteless allegory descriptive of the seven liberal arts was the exclusive possession of the Irish : cf. Haddan, Remains 273 sq., 280. In Alcuin the very name does not occur, and Mr Mullinger, pp. 64 sqq., Ill, 118, has elaborated a theory of this writer s studied hostility to Mar- tianus. Had however such a motive existed I feel confident that it would have appeared somewhere in Alcuin s writings, His silence has much rather the look of ignorance. Nor can it be said that the work was only read wherever pious scruples did not prevent (p. 65), in face of abundant instances of its use from Remigius of Auxerre to John of Salisbury.
