The beginning and the end of John the Scot’s life are unknown; we know only the middle period, during which he was employed by the king of France. He is supposed to have been born about 800, and to have died about 877, but both dates are guesswork. He was in France during the papacy of Pope Nicholas I, and we meet again, in his life, the characters who appear in connection with that Pope, such as Charles the Bald and the Emperor Michael and the Pope himself.
John was invited to France by Charles the Bald about the year 843, and was by him placed at the head of the court school. A dispute as to predestination and free will had arisen between Gottschalk, a monk, and the important ecclesiastic Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims. The monk was predestinarian, the archbishop libertarian. John supported the archbishop in a treatise On Divine Predestination, but his support went too far for prudence. The subject was a thorny one; Augustine had dealt with it in his writings against Pelagius, but it was dangerous to agree with Augustine and still more dangerous to disagree with him explicitly. John supported free will, and this might have passed uncensured; but what roused indignation was the purely philosophic character of his argument. Not that he professed to controvert anything accepted in theology, but that he maintained the equal, or even superior, authority of a philosophy independent of revelation. He contended that reason and revelation are both sources of truth, and therefore cannot conflict; but if they ever seem to conflict, reason is to be preferred. True religion, he said, is true philosophy; but, conversely, true philosophy is true religion. His work was condemned by two councils, in 855 and 859; the first of these described it as “Scots porridge.”
He escaped punishment, however, owing to the support of the king, with whom he seems to have been on familiar terms. If William of Malmesbury is to be believed, the king, when John was dining with him, asked: “What separates a Scot from a sot?” and John replied, “Only the dinner table.” The king died in 877, and after this date nothing is known as to John. Some think that he also died in that year. There are legends that he was invited to England by Alfred the Great, that he became abbot of Malmesbury or Athelney, and was murdered by the monks. This misfortune, however, seems to have befallen some other John.
John’s next work was a translation from the Greek of the pseudo-Dionysius. This was a work which had great fame in the early Middle Ages. When Saint Paul preached in Athens, “certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite” (Acts XVII, 34). Nothing more is now known about this man, but in the Middle Ages a great deal more was known. He had travelled to France, and founded the abbey of Saint Denis; so at least it was said by Hilduin, who was abbot just before John’s arrival in France. Moreover he was the reputed author of an important work reconciling Neoplatonism with Christianity. The date of this work is unknown; it was certainly before 500 and after Plotinus. It was widely known and admired in the East, but in the West it was not generally known until the Greek Emperor Michael, in 827, sent a copy to Louis the Pious, who gave it to the above-mentioned Abbot Hilduin. He, believing it to have been written by Saint Paul’s disciple, the reputed founder of his abbey, would have liked to know what its contents were; but nobody could translate the Greek until John appeared. He accomplished the translation, which he must have done with pleasure, as his own opinions were in close accord with those of the pseudo-Dionysius, who, from that time onward, had a great influence on Catholic philosophy in the West.
John’s translation was sent to Pope Nicholas in 860. The Pope was offended because his permission had not been sought before the work was published, and he ordered Charles to send John to Rome—an order which was ignored. But as to the substance, and more especially the scholarship shown in the translation, he had no fault to find. His librarian Anastasius, an excellent Grecian, to whom he submitted it for an opinion, was astonished that a man from a remote and barbarous country could have possessed such a profound knowledge of Greek.
John’s greatest work was called (in Greek) On the Division of Nature. This book was what, in scholastic times, would have been termed “realist”; that is to say, it maintained, with Plato, that universals are anterior to particulars. He includes in “Nature” not only what is, but also what is not. The whole of Nature is divided into four classes: (1) what creates and is not created, (2) what creates and is created, (3) what is created but does not create, (4) what neither creates nor is created. The first, obviously, is God. The second is the (Platonic) ideas, which subsist in God. The third is things in space and time. The fourth, surprisingly, is again God, not as Creator, but as the End and Purpose of all things. Everything that emanates from God strives to return to Him; thus the end of all such things is the same as their beginning. The bridge between the One and the many is the Logos.
In the realm of not-being he includes various things, for example, physical objects, which do not belong to the intelligible world, and sin, since it means loss of the divine pattern. That which creates and is not created alone has essential subsistence; it is the essence of all things. God is the beginning, middle, and end of things. God’s essence is unknowable to men, and even to angels. Even to Himself He is, in a sense, unknowable: “God does not know Himself, what He is, because He is not a what; in a certain respect He is incomprehensible to Himself and to every intellect.”* In the being of things God’s being can be seen; in their order, His wisdom; in their movement, His life. His being is the Father, His wisdom the Son, His life the Holy Ghost. But Dionysius is right in saying that no name can be truly asserted of God. There is an affirmative theology, in which He is said to be truth, goodness, essence, etc., but such affirmations are only symbolically true, for all such predicates have an opposite, but God has no opposite.
The class of things that both create and are created embraces the whole of the prime causes, or prototypes, or Platonic ideas. The total of these prime causes is the Logos. The world of ideas is eternal, and yet created. Under the influence of the Holy Ghost, these prime causes give rise to the world of particular things, the materiality of which is illusory. When it is said that God created things out of “nothing,” this “nothing” is to be understood as God Himself, in the sense in which He transcends all knowledge.
Creation is an eternal process: the substance of all finite things is God. The creature is not a being distinct from God. The creature subsists in God, and God manifests Himself in the creature in an ineffable manner. “The Holy Trinity loves Itself in us and in Itself;† It sees and moves Itself.”
Sin has its source in freedom: it arose because man turned towards himself instead of towards God. Evil does not have its ground in God, for in God there is no idea of evil. Evil is not-being and has no ground, for if it had a ground it would be necessary. Evil is a privation of good.
The Logos is the principle that brings the many back to the One, and man back to God; it is thus the Saviour of the world. By union with God, the part of man that effects union becomes divine.
John disagrees with the Aristotelians in refusing substantiality to particular things. He calls Plato the summit of philosophers. But the first three of his kinds of being are derived indirectly from Aristotle’s moving-not-moved, moving-and-moved, moved-but-not-moving. The fourth kind of being in John’s system, that which neither creates nor is created, is derived from the doctrine of Dionysius, that all things return into God.
The unorthodoxy of John the Scot is evident from the above summary. His pantheism, which refuses substantial reality to creatures, is contrary to Christian doctrine. His interpretation of the creation out of “nothing” is not such as any prudent theologian could accept. His Trinity, which closely resembles that of Plotinus, fails to preserve the equality of the Three Persons, although he tries to safeguard himself on this point. His independence of mind is shown by these heresies, and is astonishing in the ninth century. His Neoplatonic outlook may perhaps have been common in Ireland, as it was among the Greek Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries. It may be that, if we knew more about Irish Chr
istianity from the fifth to the ninth century, we should find him less surprising. On the other hand, it may be that most of what is heretical in him is to be attributed to the influence of the pseudo-Dionysius, who, because of his supposed connection with Saint Paul, was mistakenly believed to be orthodox.
His view of creation as timeless is, of course, also heretical, and compels him to say that the account in Genesis is allegorical. Paradise and the fall are not to be taken literally. Like all pantheists, he has difficulties about sin. He holds that man was originally without sin, and when he was without sin he was without distinction of sex. This, of course, contradicts the statement “male and female created he them.” According to John, it was only as the result of sin that human beings were divided into male and female. Woman embodies man’s sensuous and fallen nature. In the end, distinction of sex will again disappear, and we shall have a purely spiritual body.* Sin consists in misdirected will, in falsely supposing something good which is not so. Its punishment is natural; it consists in discovering the vanity of sinful desires. But punishment is not eternal. Like Origen, John holds that even the devils will be saved at last, though later than other people.
John’s translation of the pseudo-Dionysius had a great influence on medieval thought, but his magnum opus on the division of Nature had very little. It was repeatedly condemned as heretical, and at last, in 1225, Pope Honorius III ordered all copies of it to be burnt. Fortunately this order was not efficiently carried out.
CHAPTER IX
Ecclesiastical Reform in the Eleventh Century
FOR the first time since the fall of the Western Empire, Europe, during the eleventh century, made rapid progress not subsequently lost. There had been progress of a sort during the Carolingian renaissance, but it proved to be not solid. In the eleventh century, the improvement was lasting and many-sided. It began with monastic reform; it then extended to the papacy and Church government; towards the end of the century it produced the first scholastic philosophers. The Saracens were expelled from Sicily by the Normans; the Hungarians, having become Christians, ceased to be marauders; the conquests of the Normans in France and England saved those countries from further Scandinavian incursions. Architecture, which had been barbaric except where Byzantine influence prevailed, attained sudden sublimity. The level of education rose enormously among the clergy, and considerably in the lay aristocracy.
The reform movement, in its earlier stages, was, in the minds of its promoters, actuated exclusively by moral motives. The clergy, both regular and secular, had fallen into bad ways, and earnest men set to work to make them live more in accordance with their principles. But behind this purely moral motive there was another, at first perhaps unconscious, but gradually becoming more and more open. This motive was to complete the separation between clergy and laity, and, in so doing, to increase the power of the former. It was therefore natural that the victory of reform in the Church should lead straight on to a violent conflict between Emperor and Pope.
Priests had formed a separate and powerful caste in Egypt, Babylonia, and Persia, but not in Greece or Rome. In the primitive Christian Church, the distinction between clergy and laity arose gradually; when we read of “bishops” in the New Testament, the word does not mean what it has come to mean to us. The separation of the clergy from the rest of the population had two aspects, one doctrinal, the other political; the political aspect depended upon the doctrinal. The clergy possessed certain miraculous powers, especially in connection with the sacraments—except baptism, which could be performed by laymen. Without the help of the clergy, marriage, absolution, and extreme unction were impossible. Even more important, in the Middle Ages, was transubstantiation: only a priest could perform the miracle of the mass. It was not until the eleventh century, in 1079, that the doctrine of transubstantiation became an article of faith, though it had been generally believed for a long time.
Owing to their miraculous powers, priests could determine whether a man should spend eternity in heaven or in hell. If he died while excommunicate, he went to hell; if he died after priests had performed all the proper ceremonies, he would ultimately go to heaven provided he had duly repented and confessed. Before going to heaven, however, he would have to spend some time—perhaps a very long time—suffering the pains of purgatory. Priests could shorten this time by saying masses for his soul, which they were willing to do for a suitable money payment.
All this, it must be understood, was genuinely and firmly believed both by priests and by laity; it was not merely a creed officially professed. Over and over again, the miraculous powers of the clergy gave them the victory over powerful princes at the head of their armies. This power, however, was limited in two ways: by reckless outbreaks of passion on the part of furious laymen, and by divisions among the clergy. The inhabitants of Rome, until the time of Gregory VII, showed little respect for the person of the Pope. They would kidnap him, imprison him, poison him, or fight against him, whenever their turbulent factional strife tempted them to such action. How is this compatible with their beliefs? Partly, no doubt, the explanation lies in mere lack of self-control; partly, however, in the thought that one could repent on one’s deathbed. Another reason, which operated less in Rome than elsewhere, was that kings could bend to their will the bishops in their kingdoms, and thus secure enough priestly magic to save themselves from damnation. Church discipline and a unified ecclesiastical government were therefore essential to the power of the clergy. These ends were secured during the eleventh century, as part and parcel of a moral reformation of the clergy.
The power of the clergy as a whole could only be secured by very considerable sacrifices on the part of individual ecclesiastics. The two great evils against which all clerical reformers directed their energies were simony and concubinage. Something must be said about each of these.
Owing to the benefactions of the pious, the Church had become rich. Many bishops had huge estates, and even parish priests had, as a rule, what for those times was a comfortable living. The appointment of bishops was usually, in practice, in the hands of the king, but sometimes in those of some subordinate feudal noble. It was customary for the king to sell bishoprics; this, in fact, provided a substantial part of his income. The bishop, in turn, sold such ecclesiastical preferment as was in his power. There was no secret about this. Gerbert (Sylvester II) represented bishops as saying: “I gave gold and I received the episcopate; but yet I do not fear to receive it back if I behave as I should. I ordain a priest and I receive gold; I make a deacon and I receive a heap of silver. Behold the gold which I gave I have once more unlessened in my purse.”* Peter Damian in Milan, in 1059, found that every cleric in the city, from the archbishop downwards, had been guilty of simony. And this state of affairs was in no way exceptional.
Simony, of course, was a sin, but that was not the only objection to it. It caused ecclesiastical preferment to go by wealth, not merit; it confirmed lay authority in the appointment of bishops, and episcopal subservience to secular rulers; and it tended to make the episcopate part of the feudal system. Moreover, when a man had purchased preferment, he was naturally anxious to recoup himself, so that worldly rather than spiritual concerns were likely to preoccupy him. For these reasons, the campaign against simony was a necessary part of the ecclesiastical struggle for power.
Very similar considerations applied to clerical celibacy. The reformers of the eleventh century often spoke of “concubinage” when it would have been more accurate to speak of “marriage.” Monks, of course, were precluded from marriage by their vow of chastity, but there had been no clear prohibition of marriage for the secular clergy. In the Eastern Church, to this day, parish priests are allowed to be married. In the West, in the eleventh century, most parish priests were married. Bishops, for their part, appealed to Saint Paul’s pronouncement: “A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife.”* There was not the same clear moral issue as in the matter of simony, but in the insistence on clerical celibacy there were polit
ical motives very similar to those in the campaign against simony.†
When priests were married, they naturally tried to pass on Church property to their sons. They could do this legally if their sons became priests; therefore one of the first steps of the reform party, when it acquired power, was to forbid the ordination of priests’ sons.‡ But in the confusion of the times there was still danger that, if priests had sons, they would find means of illegally alienating parts of the Church lands. In addition to this economic consideration, there was also the fact that, if a priest was a family man like his neighbours, he seemed to them less removed from themselves. There was, from at least the fifth century onwards, an intense admiration for celibacy, and if the clergy were to command the reverence on which their power depended, it was highly advantageous that they should be obviously separated from other men by abstinence from marriage. The reformers themselves, no doubt, sincerely believed that the married state, though not actually sinful, is lower than the state of celibacy, and is only conceded to the weakness of the flesh. Saint Paul says: “If they cannot contain, let them marry;”§ but a really holy man ought to be able to “contain.” Therefore clerical celibacy is essential to the moral authority of the Church.
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