42 John Scotus Erigena

John Scotus Erigena

Though a noteworthy thinker of the Christian West, John Scotus Erigena’s origins are nonetheless obscure. He certainly came from Ireland, where he was born at the beginning of the ninth century. But we do not know when he left his island to cross the channel and thus fully enter that cultural world which was coming into being around the Carolingians, and in particular around Charles the Bald, in ninth-century France. Just as we are not certain of the date of his birth, likewise we do not know the year of his death; but, according to the experts, it must have been in about the year 870…

Taken from Great Christian Thinkers by Pope Benedict XVI