JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA
(John Scotus | Johannes Scotus Erigena)
Although he was the first Western philosopher to emerge from the dark ages, he was one of the great advocates for freedom of speech and freedom of thought. He not only was publicly critical of many authority figures of the day, but he refused Pope Nicholas I’s orders to submit his work to Church censorship. He was supported by King Charles nonetheless, but various church councils condemned many of his writings. Ironically, one of his works that caused so much criticism was a defense of one of the views of Hincmar, the cleric who he attacked in the quotation. The radical notion was that the destiny of an individual is not totally dependent upon God, but that man has been given free will and that has some part in determining salvation.
John Scotus Eriugena, also known as Johannes Scotus Erigena, John the Scot, or John the Irish-born (c. 800 – c. 877) was an Irish Neoplatonist philosopher, theologian and poet of the Early Middle Ages. Bertrand Russell dubbed him "the most astonishing person of the ninth century". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states that he "is the most significant Irish intellectual of the early monastic period. He is generally recognized to be both the outstanding philosopher (in terms of originality) of the Carolingian era and of the whole period of Latin philosophy stretching from Boethius to Anselm".
