On the other hand, John has been claimed as in some
sense l the author of the scholastic debate of the earlier
part of the middle ages. He was the first writer in the
west who systematically adopted a regular syllogistic
form of argumentation, and he was continually re
proached with this peculiarity by antagonists such as
Prudentius of Troyes. Forgotten for a while, the tradi
tion should seem to have somehow revived, possibly
through the studies of Roscelin, and by such an one to
have been applied to trains of reasoning widely diverse
from anything suspected by John Scotus. On one side
he is reputed the father of nominalism, on the other he
is thought to have exerted no slight influence on the theo
logical speculations of Gilbert of La Porree. When, further,
we observe that m the Division of Nature was associated in
the condemnation of the heresy of Amalric of Bene,[1] and
that it was this work which called forth a n bull of Honorius the Third in 1225, enjoining a strict search for all all copies of the book or of any parts of it, and ordering
them to be sent to Rome to be solemnly burnt, any one
who knowingly kept back a copy being declared obnoxious to the sentence of excommunication and the brand
of heretical depravity, we shall be able to form some
estimate of the variety and the intensity of danger which
was subsequently discovered in the teaching of the Scot.
That such a judgement was warranted by the principles of correct catholic opinion will hardly be denied ; but we must not omit to place beside it the fact that there was also literary tradition respecting John, so soon as his memory had been recalled to notice, of a gentler and more appreciative character. His translation of Dionysius was not only widely read, as we know from the numerous manuscripts of it that exist, but also commented on by a man of the saintly reputation of Hugh of Saint Victor, not to mention many others ; and it is
- ↑ See Charles Jourdain s ex- animation of the evidence of Martinus Polonus, in the Memoires de 1’Academic des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 26 (2) 470-477; 1870.
