King Clotar I’s wife, Radegund, who was establishing a house at Poitiers. Caesaria
enjoins Radegund to allow no nun to enter who does not learn the liberal arts.
The contribution of Merovingian culture to the history of philosophy was basically
that of preserving the scholarship of the ancients. Carolingian scholars and philosophers
were generally intent on the classification of what is and can be known about the world.
The foundation for intellectual life in the Carolingian era was laid by Alcuin of York (ca.
735–804), who had been invited by Charlemagne to become the head of his palace school
at Aix-la-Chapelle. Here, Alcuin revitalized teaching in the Trivium by writing textbooks
like De grammatica (which has a Boethian introduction entitled “De vera philosophia”),
De rhetorica et virtutibus, and De dialectica; he was also intent on giving rules for the
correct transcription of manuscripts. As abbot of Tours for the last eight years of his life,
he was especially interested in building up the library and in developing the Liberal Arts
with a view to exegetical studies of the Scriptures, which were to provide sapientia, or
true philosophy.
The early 9th century witnessed some philosophical discussion of Aristotle’s
methodology, as well as discussion of the relation between grammar and ontology; of the
perennial question of the exact status of the soul; and even, in the realm of political
theory, of the duties of princes. But without doubt the greatest philosophical impact was
made by the gift of the Greek text of the works of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (the
Corpus areopagiticum) from the Byzantine emperor Michael the Stammerer to Louis the
Pious in 827. Charles the Bald (r. 840–77) can be seen as France’s first great patron of
philosophy, for in 860 it was he who asked Johannes Scottus Eriugena (d. 877) to
translate this collection of Neoplatonic works into Latin. Perhaps most noteworthy in
Pseudo-Dionysius’s work is the idea that evil qua evil is nonexistent; evil must be
regarded merely as a lack of goodness, and it can therefore be described only in negative
terms. On the other hand, God as Essence par excellence can never be adequately
described in nonessential language. In this way, the foundation was laid down for the
reception of ideas of learned ignorance that played an important role especially in
medieval philosophical and theological mysticism, such as that of the Victorines in the
12th century and the Parisian Lullists of the late 14th. Thus, Greek Christian texts by
Pseudo-Dionysius and later by Maximus the Confessor, Gregory of Nyssa, and perhaps
Epiphanius of Salamis (Cyprus) entered into Latin European thought, strongly
influencing such later thinkers as Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and Nicholas of Cusa.
The influence of Eriugena’s work has not yet been fully traced, but it is safe to say that it
had a wide circulation especially through florilegia and glosses in manuscripts of his text.
A nexus seems to have been the school of Auxerre, with scholars like Heiric (841ca. 876)
and Remigius (ca. 841-ca. 908). Remigius also wrote many commentaries on grammar
(Donatus, Priscian, Eutyches, Phokas), on style (Bede), and on the arts in general
(Martianus Capella). Though not very innovative, they did serve to keep alive in France
and the rest of northern Europe the tradition of the Liberal Arts on which philosophy
must build.
Philosophy in 10th- and early 11th-century France was limited. There is some teaching
of logic, mathematics, and astronomy and discussion of the problem of how reason is to
be used, notably by Gerbert of Aurillac at Reims (ca. 945–1003), who may have had
access to Arabic learning through his studies in the Catalan monastery of Ripoll. But it is
not until the middle of the 11th century that philosophy in France receives new impulses,
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