John Scotus Eriugena
MedievalMystic
The lone genius of the dark centuries, who read Greek when almost no one in the West could, and dared to fold God and creation into a single nature.
An Irish scholar at the court of Charles the Bald, Eriugena was the most original mind in Europe for three hundred years on either side of him. Knowing Greek, he translated the mystical Dionysius and absorbed a Neoplatonism no one else in the Latin West could reach. His Periphyseon divides all reality into a single unfolding Nature: God as uncreated creator, the eternal causes, the created world, and God again as the end to which all returns. It was too bold for its age — condemned centuries later as pantheism — but it remains one of the great speculative systems, written in a desert of learning.
Places
Ideas
Words
“We do not know what God is. God himself does not know what he is, because he is not any thing.”
Works
Life & Moments
Born in Ireland
Born in Ireland when the Latin West had almost lost Greek. He would become the most original mind in Europe for three hundred years on either side.
At the Carolingian Court
Joined the court of Charles the Bald, the rare place in early medieval Europe where Greek learning could survive.
Translating Dionysius
Translated the mystical Dionysius from Greek into Latin, bringing Neoplatonism to a West that could barely reach it.
The Periphyseon
Completed his great system folding God and creation into a single unfolding nature, too bold for its age.
Influence
Influenced
- Meister Eckhart
The Neoplatonic mysticism Eriugena carried into the Latin West flows toward the speculative mysticism of Eckhart.
- Nicholas of Cusa
Eriugena's insistence that God exceeds every category the intellect can apply to him directly prefigures Cusa's learned ignorance, and Cusa owned and annotated copies of Eriugena's work.
