selves to voluntary exile to attend the bidding of Solomon the wise" --i. e., King Charles the
Bald. *
The lives of learned men have at many times been perforce nomadic. At the beginning of Greek
philosophy, many of the philosophers were refugees from the Persians; at the end of it, in the
time of Justinian, they became refugees to the Persians. In the fifth century, as we have just
seen, men of learning fled from Gaul to the Western Isles to escape the Germans; in the ninth
century, they fled back from England and Ireland to escape the Scandinavians. In our own day,
German philosophers have to fly even further West to escape their compatriots. I wonder
whether it will be equally long before a return flight takes place.
Too little is known of the Irish in the days when they were preserving for Europe the tradition
of classical culture. This learning was connected with monasteries, and was full of piety, as
their penitentials show; but it does not seem to have been much concerned with theological
niceties. Being monastic rather than episcopal, it had not the administrative outlook that
characterized Continental ecclesiastics from Gregory the Great onwards. And being in the main
cut off from effective contact with Rome, it still regarded the Pope as he was regarded in the
time of Saint Ambrose, not as he came to be regarded later. Pelagius, though probably a Briton,
is thought by some to have been an Irishman. It is likely that his heresy survived in Ireland,
where authority could not stamp it out, as it did, with difficulty, in Gaul. These circumstances
do something to account for the extraordinary freedom and freshness of John the Scot's
speculations.
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
* Ibid., p. 524.