SCIENCES. 45 



behind him are instinct with the noblest enthusiasm for philosophy, which he 

 does not separate from the liberal arts, but the importance of which he 

 foresees, and which he looks upon as the best preparation for the study of 

 divinity. 



The work of Alcuin was continued by his disciple, Raban Maurus, who 

 died Archbishop of Mainz in 856. . He contributed to the first progress of 

 the vulgar tongue by the composition of a Latin-Teuton glossary for all the 

 books of the Old and New Testament. The voluminous collection of his 

 works comprises, together with commentaries upon the Sacred Scriptures, a 

 treatise upon the " Instruction of Clerks," another upon the " Calculation of 

 Time," and, above all, an encyclopaedia in twenty books, which he entitled, 

 " On the Universe," and in which he treats successively of God, of the Divine 

 Persons, of the angels, of men, and of the other creatures. 



A man possessing more original but less solid and reliable qualities than 

 Raban was the Irish John, surnamed Scotus or Erigena, who figured in the 

 reign of Charles the Bold (Fig. 37) amongst the masters of the Palace 

 School founded in Paris by Charlemagne. Scotus, whose talent was subtle 

 and hardy, and who was well versed in the Greek language, got lost in the 

 mazes of a philosophy which Compromised the verities of the faith by con- 

 founding them with the pantheistic hallucinations of the school of Alexandria. 

 His principal work is a treatise upon the " Division of Natures," in which he 

 teaches that the creation is eternal ; that God derived the world from himself, 

 and formed it of his own substance ; that the Creator and the creature must not, 

 therefore, be regarded as objects distinct from one another ; that the creature 

 exists in God ; and that God, by an ineffable marvel, is created in the creature, 

 &c. No wonder that these strange doctrines were anathematized by the Church, 

 and that in the early part of the Middle Ages they had few adepts. The 

 name of John Scotus had but a momentary celebrity, and was soon forgotten. 



There is no need to dwell upon several other masters, such as Heiric and 

 Remi of Auxerre, whom posteritv has almost forgotten, much as they were 

 thought of by their contemporaries. But a few words are essential about 

 that remarkable man, Gerbert, born in Auvergne in the first half of the tenth 

 centurv, educated at Aurillac by the monks of the Abbey of St. G^raud, 

 mixed up in the course of his life in the events which agitated France, 

 Germany, and Italy, councillor of the Emperors of Germany, in turn school- 

 man, diplomatist, Archbishop of Rheims and Ravenna, Pope in the year 



