St. Denis, patron of the Franks, had become available
through a codex donated by the Byzantine emperor Mi-
chael the Stammerer to Louis the Pious in 827. Through
his reading and translation of Pseudo-Dionysius,
Eriugena was introduced to certain features of Greek
theology, such as the unfolding of the universe accord-
ing to procession and return and the methods of nega-
tive and affi rmative theology, which he subsequently
incorporated into his own thinking. He also translated
Maximus the Confessor’s Quaestiones ad Thalassium
and Gregory of Nyssa’s De hominis opifi cio.
Eriugena’s major intellectual achievement was the
Periphyseon, or On the Division of Nature. This work,
written ca. 864–66, is the mature product of his refl ec-
tions on Greek theology as well as on the western
tradition of Augustine and Boethius. Its most impres-
sive feature is its scope: an inclusive treatment of all of
nature, under which he classifi es both God and creation.
Structuring the universe along the lines of procession
and return, Eriugena discusses all major theological and
philosophical issues of his time in a dialectical fashion.
The discussion of nature ranges from God (nature that
creates but is not created) through a treatment of the
divine ideas (nature that is created and creates) and
of spatiotemporal creations (nature that is created and
does not create) back to God (nature that does not cre-
ate and is not created). In addition, his Expositiones in
ierarchiam coelestem (on Pseudo-Dionysius’s Celestial
Hierarchy) and his homily Vox spiritualis aquilae have
become famous.
Due to the later association of Eriugena with the
heresy of Amalric of Bène, Pope Honorius III in 1225
ordered that all extant copies of the Periphyseon be
burned. Yet, through direct and indirect influence,
Eriugena’s voice continued to be heard in the medieval
Christian-Platonic tradition. In connection with idealist
philosophy and process theology, Eriugena’s ideas also
stimulate modern thinking.
See also Gottschalk
Further Reading
Eriugena, Johannes Scottus. Commentaire sur l’évangile de Jean,
ed. and trans. Édouard Jeauneau. Paris: Cerf, 1972.
——. De divina praedestinatione liber, ed. Goulven Madec.
CCCM 50. Turnhout: Brepols, 1978.
——. Expositiones in ierarchiam coelestem, ed. Jeanne Barbet.
CCCM 31. Turnhout: Brepols, 1975.
——. Periphyseon (De divisione naturae), ed. I.P. Sheldon-Wil-
liams and Ludwig Bieler. 3 vols. Dublin: Dublin Institute for
Advanced Studies, 1968–81.
——. Periphyseon = On the Division of Nature, trans. Myra I.
Uhlfelder with summaries by Jean A. Potter. Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1976.
Marenbon, John. From the Circle of Alcuin to the School of
Auxerre: Logic, Theology and Philosophy in the Early Middle
Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Moran, Dermot. The Philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena: A
Study of Idealism in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990.
O’Meara, John J., and Ludwig Bieler, eds. The Mind of Eriugena.
Dublin; Irish University Press, 1973.
Otten, Willemien. The Anthropology of Johannes Scottus Eri-
ugena. Leiden: Brill, 1991.
Willemien OttenEUGENIUS OF PALERMO
(c. 1130-c. 1202)
Eugenius of Palermo was a highly placed official,
an accomplished poet, and a translator of scientifi c
and literary works. He facilitated east-west cultural
transmission in the kingdom of Sicily when it was still
signifi cantly polyglot.
Eugenius was a member of the Italian-Greek
nobility that had filled important positions since the
early days of Norman rule; he was the son, nephew,
and grandson of offi cials who had attained the rank
of admiral, or emir—a title that was not exclusively
naval—and whose work must have required a knowl-
edge of Arabic. From 1174 to 1190, Eugenius served
as master of the duana baronum, a royal fi nancial of-
fi ce, then based in Salerno, for the mainland part of
the kingdom. Eugenius himself was made an admiral
in 1190 by the newly crowned king, Tancred; he was a
major fi gure at the court in Palermo during the reigns
of Tancred and Tancred’s immediate successor, Wil-
liam III. Along with others close to William, Eugenius
was arrested at the end of 1194; he was charged with
conspiracy against Henry VI and was imprisoned in
southern Germany. By July 1196, however, he was
back in the kingdom and was serving, in Apulia and
without the title of admiral, as a senior subordinate of
the imperial legate Conrad of Querfurt. He may also
have been the Eugenius who was master chamberlain
for Apulia and Terra di Lavoro from 1198 to at least
1202; this is less certain but is usually accepted. The
date of his death is unknown.
Eugenius’s multilingualism bore considerable fruit.
He is assumed to be the Eugenius who assisted the au-
thor of the fi rst Latin translation (c. 1159) of Ptolemy’s
Almagest, an astronomical text transmitted in Greek
and Arabic manuscripts; his fl uency in all three tongues
is noted in the translator’s acknowledgment. His own
Latin translation of Ptolemy’s Optics from its Arabic
version (the original Greek is lost), which seems to
have been contemporary with the translation of the
Almagest, was used by Roger Bacon in the thirteenth
century and survives in more than a dozen manuscripts.
Eugenius’s Latin translation of the cryptic Prophecy
of the Erythrean Sibyl from Greek is now known only
through its very popular thirteenth-century Joachite re-
working by John of Parma or an associate, but signifi cantEUGENIUS OF PALERMO