SOURCE: Haren, Michael. “From Ancient World to Middle Ages: Adaptation and Transmission.” In Medieval Thought: The Western Intellectual Tradition from Antiquity to the Thirteenth Century, pp. 37-82. Hampshire, England: Macmillan Publishers Ltd, 1985.

In the following excerpt, Haren provides an overview of Eriugena's background, career, and major writings.

The Background to Eriugena's Work

The Visigothic culture which had produced Isidore of Seville was submerged in the Islamic invasion which swamped the Spanish peninsula—with the exception of the Basque land and the adjoining coastal region—in 711. From then until the Carolingian renaissance, some seventy years later, the focus on intellectual developments moves to the north-western periphery of Europe. Ireland had never been part of the Roman empire but Christianity had brought with it a Latin culture which continued, at least as far as grammar and rhetoric were concerned, in Irish monasticism during the sixth century. Columbanus in particular was...