SOURCE: Makin, Peter. “Ezra Pound and Scotus Eriugena.” Comparative Literature Studies 10 (1973): 60-83.

In the following essay, Makin explains how Ezra Pound made use of Eriugena's concepts in his own work.

“That Irishman” (“Scotus ille”), as some of his contemporaries knew him,¹ was born at some time in the early ninth century.² He left Ireland before the year 847, when he was to be found at the royal court of Charles the Bald, successor on the throne of France to Louis the Debonair. From the epithets applied to him (“scholasticus et eruditus”) it has been supposed that he taught at the Palace School.

He is next heard of at Laon, where (with another Irishman called Martin) he represented the only noteworthy understanding of Greek in the West of his time. It is possible that his retirement to Laon was connected with events that had taken place while Erigena was still...