CHAPTER XVI

THE EARLY PERIOD OF THE MIDDLE AGES (476–1000)

=The General Character of the Early Period.= It is no accident that these five hundred years of the Middle Ages were spiritualistic. Both the political disturbances and the intellectual inheritance from the Hellenic-Roman period made the period such. The troubles during the long death agony of the Roman empire had deprived the people of their interest in this world. The world of kingdoms and material things presented no ideals; and the age would have been pessimistic had not the Church through Augustine presented a heavenly ideal and the means to win that ideal. Both what the material world had taken away from man and what the spiritual seemed to offer him, made the age an age of faith. The principle of inner spirituality was moved to a central position. All things pointed to the supernatural and the transcendent. Men dwelt upon the nature of God, the number and rank of the angels, the salvation of the soul. In this, as in the Transitional Period following, little was known of Aristotle except some fragments of his logic; and little was known of Plato except in the form of neo-Platonism. But in this period (before the year 1000) the pupil was instructed in both Aristotle and Plato, and held them both together without controversy. Mysticism had little independence of church doctrine, as appears in the case of Erigena, the consequences of whose doctrine were not at first seen. The monastery became the fundamental social organization and the central social force. Organized ascetic life permitted an absorbing contemplation of heaven. Prayer superseded thought; faith prescribed knowledge. The intellectual world was dominated by neo-Platonic idealism, and the all-important topic in men’s minds was that of God’s grace. Augustine stood at the beginning of the period and organized its conception of grace for it. Erigena stood near the end and stated the neo-Platonism of the period in extreme form, presenting the issue for the scholasticism of the many years to come. The presentation of the doctrine of these two men will therefore be the philosophical exemplification of the attitude of the time.

Illustration: MEDIÆVAL GEOGRAPHY. THE COSMAS MAP, A. D. 547

=From J. Keane’s _Evolution of Geography_=

(Cosmas was an Egyptian monk who had once been a merchant and traveler. He did not use the records of his own travels to supplement the Greek and Roman plans, but he laid down as a fact that the earth is flat. Then he piously adduced evidence from the Scriptures to support his view. The maps drawn by Cosmas are the earliest Christian maps that have survived. Their crudeness, compared with the maps of the Romans and Arabs, reveals the low state of knowledge among the Christians.)

=The Historical Position of Augustine.= The Middle Ages were inaugurated by a mind of the highest order,――Augustine.[49] If one were to select the most influential figures in the history of philosophy, Augustine might be chosen to stand with Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, and Kant. “In some respects Augustine stands nearer to us than Hegel and Schopenhauer.”[50] For the church, but no less for the period, it was a fortunate circumstance that Augustine should have lived just as antiquity was closing and the mediæval period beginning. Through him the various influences of the past were gathered up and presented in a scientific statement for the Middle Ages. “The history of piety and of dogma in the West was so thoroughly dominated by Augustine from the beginning of the fifth century to the era of the Reformation, that we must take this whole time as forming one period.”[51]

In his relation to antiquity Augustine drew especially upon the fundamental teachings of St. Paul, the neo-Platonists, and the Patristics for the presentation of his own doctrine. He was familiar with a great number of the doctrines of antiquity, and was the medium of their transmission to the Middle Ages. He does not seem to have known the system of Aristotle, but the importance which he attached to the dialectic in the explanation of the Scriptures contributed a good deal to the use of the logic of Aristotle by the scholastics of the Middle Ages. He had some knowledge of the Pythagoreans, the Stoics, and the Epicureans through the writings of Cicero. But the most important philosophical influence upon Augustine was the neo-Platonic teaching of Plotinus and Porphyry. Neo-Platonism, the Pauline theology, and the Patristic are the large factors in the doctrine of Augustine.

In his relation to the Middle Ages, what in brief was the position of Augustine? By means of neo-Platonism and a discriminating psychological analysis _he transformed the previous belief in God as a ♦judge into a belief in the personal relations between God and man_. That is to say, he carried out monotheism spiritually, and in doing this the influence of neo-Platonism is very strong in him. Augustine made one of the centres of his teaching the living relation of the soul to God. He took religion out of the sphere of cosmological science, where it had been placed by Origen and the Gnostics, and made it personal. Furthermore, he offered with this new ideal a plan of salvation; for Augustine made it his task to show (1) what God is, and (2) what the salvation of the soul requires. Whereas before Augustine the only dogmatic scheme had presented the place and function of _Christ_ in salvation, Augustine was interested in the place of _man_ in salvation. Thus he elaborated monotheism into spiritual monotheism and delineated the inward processes of the Christian life, _i. e._ of sin and grace. This important advance made by Augustine must be attributed to the influence of philosophy――neo-Platonism――upon him.

But it must not be supposed that the total teaching of Augustine and the total influence of his thought is contained in this single change in Christian piety, as we have stated it. The various Pagan and Christian elements, as they lie in his system, have little coherence; and Augustine does not settle the rival claims between them. As the mediæval period advanced, what in his teaching had been a mere incoherence became in the hands of others positive discord. He gave the church impulses of the highest spiritual quality, but he left no well-organized capital. These impulses toward spiritual piety have never been lost, but the profusion of ideas and views in Augustine, unharmonized by himself, were also a permanent bequest to posterity that produced both vital movements and violent controversies. The legal and moral party of the church resisted his teaching at the beginning, and in the sixth century, under the influence of Gregory the Great, toned down Augustine’s teaching in the direction of a conception of the church as a juristic organization.

Augustine was thus the beginner of a new line of development by his incorporation of neo-Platonism into Christian doctrine and by his use of the dialectic to present, defend, and develop the doctrine of the church. Although the years of his life fall in antiquity, although he is the collector of all the threads of the neo-Platonic and Christian religions, he belongs in the Middle Ages as the teacher of the Middle Ages. His doctrine acted as an authoritative spiritual guide for the new German peoples. They took up the problems of antiquity from the new point of view of individual spirituality, and created out of them the philosophy of the future. But philosophically Augustine was far in advance of his age, and in the intellectually torpid times that followed him little philosophical development could be expected. Not until after Charlemagne does philosophical development springing from Augustine appear. Later Luther and the Reformation reverted to him, and our modern philosophy is founded on the principle which he made central in his conception of piety.

=The Secular Science.= At the same time it must not be supposed that the teaching of Augustine was by any means the only source from which this first period of the Middle Ages drew its materials of knowledge. A glance at the list of books in a mediæval library (see p. 327) will not confirm such a supposition. Augustine does not include in his doctrine――massive as it is――all the factors that finally made up mediæval civilization. Even at the beginning there was a tendency toward secular science derived from Plato and Aristotle. Noticeable as this was at first it became prominent later. Secular science tried at first to modify scholasticism, and then later to gain an independence for itself. The doctrine of Augustine did not contain the germs of science. But at the start the Middle Ages had writings on science in the inadequate compendiums of Capella, Cassiodorus, and Boëthius, and in the fragments of the logic of Aristotle.

=The Life of Augustine= (354–430). Aurelius Augustine, often called “the Plato of Christianity,” was born in Thagaste, Numidia. His father was a Pagan, his mother a Christian; and it was his mother who contributed chiefly to the formation of his character. He was a boy of brilliant gifts, and was educated in the schools of Madaura and Carthage. At Carthage his life was full of dissipation, which he has described in his _Confessions_. He took up in succession all the scientific and religious problems of his time. He gave up the teaching of rhetoric, which he had practiced in several towns in Asia Minor and Italy, and began to study theology. He was troubled by his religious doubts and tried to find relief first in Manichæism, then in the skepticism of the Academy, and then in neo-Platonism. He was converted to Christianity through three influences: his study of Plato, the eloquence of St. Ambrose, and the unremitting moral influence of his mother. He became a priest, then a bishop, and was untiring in his activity both in the practical organization of the church and in the theoretical construction of its doctrines. He was especially active in his literary attempts to refute the Pelagian and Manichæan heresies, whose doctrines he had previously professed. His life falls at the time when the barbarian invasions were beginning and when Rome was crumbling. Moved by his Platonic idealism, he wrote his _City of God_, which, in an elaborate philosophy of history, shows that God’s city is not on earth, but in heaven.

=The Two Elements in Augustine’s Teaching.= The great masses of thought in Augustine’s mind reveal motion in two directions. On the one hand, he is the theologian who holds on high the conception of the authority of the church. On the other hand, he is the philosopher who speaks for the principle of immediate certainty for the individual. These are two foci about which his thought is in constant flux and often in contradiction. Augustine has, therefore, two criteria for truth: the truth that comes from an authority without, and the truth that comes from consciousness itself. _The authority of the church and the authority of the immediate consciousness of the individual_――these are the two central thoughts in Augustinianism. Augustine’s conception of the authority of the church acted upon him as a lofty ideal which both inspired and at the same time constrained his speculations. As he grew older he gravitated more and more toward it, and thereby became more conservative. But it was the other central thought――the authority of immediate consciousness――which he made the basis of a philosophy of original power. Through this he transcended his own time and became himself a modern, leading the Middle Ages up to him.

Augustine did not define accurately the spheres of philosophy and theology. He did not show whether reason or revelation had the higher authority. He did not try to decide between the _intelligo ut credam_ and _credo ut intelligam_, that is, between the respective authorities of reason and faith. That became, in consequence, a central philosophical problem for the schoolmen. Nevertheless, the great inheritance which Augustine left the world was along the philosophical line of _intelligo ut credam_ (of knowledge as the basis of faith instead of faith as the basis of knowledge).

=The Neo-Platonic Element: the Inner Certainties of Consciousness.= Augustine was not original in making the starting-point of his philosophy the inner certainties of consciousness. That was the point of view of his time, and the starting-point of the ascetic tendency both of Christianity and of neo-Platonism. He was dissatisfied with the world without, and turned away from it to the world within to find reality. But this had been a growing tendency ever since the time of Plato. Augustine’s originality lies in his psychological description of these certainties. He is the master of self-observation and introspection. He can describe inner experiences as well as analyze them. He puts his philosophy upon a solid anthropological basis by developing a psychology of the certainties of consciousness. In doing this he placed the inner experience in the central position of control. Thus he reached a well-defined position of “internality” for which the Stoics, Epicureans, neo-Platonists, and the preceding Christian theologians had been groping; thus he anticipated Descartes and modern philosophy.

Man clings to life in spite of all its evils. This shows that there is a reality for the soul. The material world may pass away, but the reality of soul-life is assured. Man’s inner life is ever present and cannot be imaginary. The fact that there is such a thing as probability implies the existence of certainty. Where shall I look for certainty? In myself. Certainty is there as a fact of inner observation. There are my inner mental states――my sensations, feelings, etc., whose existence cannot be doubted even if the existence of the objects to which they correspond is doubted. I am certain also of my own consciousness at that moment. To doubt my existence is to assert my existence. To doubt also implies that I will remember, live――for doubt rests upon these former ideas. The temporary character of the material world only strengthens the reality of this inner world. The existence of the material world cannot be demonstrated, and so man is driven inward to find a basis for its reality. Thus by a deep insight, although without much logical reasoning, Augustine transcends Aristotle, and anticipates modern thought by finding reality in the _unitary personality_, whose existence is an inner certainty.

But Augustine is driven farther inward; for the certainty of the existence of God is involved in this inner certainty. My doubt about the character of the world of material things implies that their truth exists and that I have the capacity for measuring it. Such truths are universal. They transcend the individual consciousness, and their mutual agreement unites all rational beings in a common standard. On the other hand, this unity of truths implies the existence of God. Truths are the Ideas (Platonic) in God’s mind.[52]

Full knowledge of God is denied to man in this life, but, nevertheless, all morality consists in love for God; all science is only an interest in the working of God in nature; all the beauty in the world around us points to the harmonious ordering of God; the history of the world is only the free act of God. Thus, in brief, does Augustine centralize the principle of inner spirituality――of “internality.” Thus does he put into control the certainty of consciousness.

This was Augustine’s great contribution to the world both in the sphere of philosophy and religion. We shall see how important this principle is in our tracing of modern philosophy. Its importance upon the growth of religion was so very great that we cannot pass it by without remark. “Augustine was the reformer of Christian piety.” In the midst of religion he discovered religion. He looked into the human heart and found it to be the lower good; he looked to God and found Him to be the higher good. In love for God, man becomes exalted to another being. This is the “new birth.” By this personal religion nature and grace are separated, but morality and religion are united. Sin is the disposition to be independent by living in a state of unrest in the desires. Sin is a state of lust and fear. All is sin in the heart of the natural man――in the heart apart from God. The pre-Augustinian religion of morality and baptism, animated by hope and fear, was supplanted by him with the conception of the desire to be happy by sharing in the bliss of God. Augustine passed from Christian pessimism to Christian optimism, to a confidence in pardoning grace. By faith and love God calls us back to himself and the soul acquires what God requires. Religion is personal and a thing of the heart. “Love, unfeigned humility, and strength to overcome the world, these are the elements of religion and its blessedness; they spring from the actual possession of the loving God. This message Augustine preached to the Christianity of his time and of all times.”[53]

But Augustine philosophically breaks with his own Platonism at one point, and finds not in the intellect, but in the will, the primary characteristic of this consciousness of inner certainty. The will is the inmost core of our being. All our mental states are formed under the direction of the purposes of the will. The striking exception to this is the cognition of the higher divine truth, in the presence of which the mind can be only passive. Revelation cannot be the production of the finite activity, but it is an act of grace before which the will is expectant and passive. Knowledge of the divine truths of the reason is the blessedness that results from the will of God and not of man. The will of man is transformed into faith, and yet even then an element of the human will is present, although passive, for the appropriation of the truth is an act of will. Thus, in regard to this difficult subject of the nature of the will, there are two observations to be made: (1) Augustine conceives the will, memory, and intellect as so intimately related as not to be faculties of the personality like the properties of a substance. They rather form an indissoluble unity of the substance of the soul. (2) The will is theoretically free, and Augustine is one of the most forcible defenders of free-will because he is also a defender of ethical responsibility and the justice of God. Theoretically the will is a force existing above sensuous nature and formally possesses the capacity of following or resisting inclination. Actually it is never free to choose, but it has the higher function of being determined by the Good. Only the good will is free.[54]

=The Authority of the Church according to Augustine.= With the fall of ancient Rome, the church was hard pressed, for the young peoples who came into the church were Arian and the only German Catholic nation was the Franks. Augustine was a man of vigor, but he seemed to lack the peculiar power of forcing the church to adopt as dogma the truths for which he stood. He always submitted himself absolutely to the tradition of the church, and yet in a general way he accomplished two things for the church at large: (1) He established tradition as the authority and law of the church; (2) He offered the church a scientifically constructed plan of salvation.

There now appears in Augustine’s teaching the second centre around which the masses of his thought group themselves. This is his conception of the church in its authority and law. Here is the principle of universality――and historical universality――and it runs counter to the principle of spiritual individualism which his psychological analysis had built up. Augustine is just as vigorous a champion of the idea of the church as the means to salvation as he is champion of the individual certainty of truth. The two antithetical propositions lie together in his mind. As a pietist, he was an individualist; as a priest, he was a loyal subject to dogma. We have discussed his teaching as it centred about man; now the discussion centres about God as represented by His church. In practical life the will of man is important, but in the eternal life the central influence is the grace of God. Between the will of man and the grace of God there is a chasm. This is felt the more by Augustine, and the necessity of a God-centred doctrine seems the greater, when he beholds the contrast between the perfectness of God and the evil world of men. Evil now appears to him as a great stream flowing through the world. Humanity is by nature void of God. Theoretically man is free, but in the actual world he is chained to his senses and to sin. Adam, the first man, alone could have possessed freedom; but Adam in his freedom sinned, and his sin was that of the whole human race. Sin is therefore original to all men now living, and no man personally deserves salvation, however meritorious his conduct. Moreover, as the result of Adam’s sin, all men would be damned were it not for the grace of God. The God-man by death brought power to replenish empty humanity with divine love. Divine love is the beginning, middle, and end of salvation. Out of this love God has sent His Son and founded His church. Universal man died, and only universal man can save. Belief in Christ is the only means of salvation, yet belief in Christ comes only by God’s grace, and divine grace is not conditioned on human worthiness. Thus it is only by grace even now that man is saved; and no injustice would be done to men were all damned. On the other hand, divine justice demands that some men at least should be excluded from salvation in order that the punishment for Adam’s sin be permanently maintained. The choice of the favored ones depends entirely upon the unsearchable decree of God. These are elected as monuments of His loving grace, while the others are elected to be damned as monuments of His justice. The apparent calamity to the majority of mankind only shows the goodness of God the more. For, in the first place, evil is not positive like the good. It is only negative and primitive――the absence of the good. The condemnation of the wicked is therefore no defect in this theocratic system. In the second place, the wicked only receive justice, for the salvation of only a few is a gratuitous act of love, which testifies to God’s mercy. But, after all, it is the integrity of the whole spiritual imperial government of God that is the important thing to consider. The King is law and goodness, and all His subjects are testimonies of His magnificent power.

=The Dark Ages= (476–800). The traditional estimate of the Middle Ages as altogether “dark” has been revised by modern scholars. The period now called the Dark Ages has been restricted to the three hundred years between the fall of old Rome (476) and the founding of the empire by Charlemagne (800). Moreover, it is now thought that even in that period the intellectual conditions were better in Italy than north of the Alps. In northern Italy the lay teacher seems always to have existed; and education never to have fallen entirely into the hands of the monastery as it did in northern Europe between 800 and 1000. After 800 the content of education north and south of the Alps seems to have been different. Everywhere, to be sure, education was comprised by the “seven liberal arts,” but the emphasis in the two regions was different. North of the Alps the dialectic was made important, and theology and logic flourished. In Italy the emphasis was upon grammar and rhetoric, and “literary Paganism” was always kept alive. Thus, when the revival came in 1200, it appeared in the form of theological controversy north of the Alps, while in Italy in the form of legal science. The analysis in the summary of the Middle Ages given above (see p. 330) applies more truthfully to the northern countries than to Italy. At the same time it is more pertinent to the history of thought, for in these northern regions, especially at Paris, mediæval philosophy was developed.

Nevertheless, it is easy for the modern scholar to go too far in trying to play fair with the Middle Ages. The first three centuries of this time were a Dark Age everywhere in Europe. Wave after wave of barbarian invasion swept over the land. It is not so much a matter of surprise that four hundred years lie between the first two philosophers,――but the matter of surprise is that there were any philosophical fruits whatever. In this respect the year 529 is significant――significant both in pointing backward to ancient culture and also in pointing forward to the feeble effort to retain some of that culture. In 529 Justinian abolished the philosophical Schools at Athens; in 529 also, St. Benedict founded his monastic school at Monte Cassino (near Naples). These two events stand for the death of antiquity and the birth of mediæval life. In this beginning of the monastic movement by St. Benedict in western Europe was lodged, as it turned out, the hope of education for the mediæval man. During the two hundred years between the year 800 and the year 1000 mediæval education was entirely in the hands of the monks.

=The Revival of Charlemagne= (800–900). The darkness of the Early Period of the Middle Ages is broken by the somewhat abortive renaissance of Charlemagne. Connected with this revival is the name of John Scotus Erigena (810–880). Note that during these five hundred years there are only two notable philosophers, Augustine and Erigena. Note that a span of four hundred years lies between them. Also note that the first philosopher, Augustine, was a Roman and the second, Erigena, was an Irishman. Thereby hangs a tale. During all those long centuries of the Dark Ages after Augustine and until Charlemagne, the light of science shone scarcely in northwestern Europe. In the whole western hemisphere there were only three places where learning prospered: one was in the far east, among the Arabians; another was at Constantinople; the third was in the far west, in Britain. Thus it was from Britain that Charlemagne had to call his educators, Alcuin and Clement, to promote learning among the Franks; and it was from Britain, too, that his successor, Charles the Bald, called the Irishman, Erigena, for the same purpose. During the renaissance of the great Charles and his successors, Irish scholars could be found in every monastery and cathedral in the empire. The teaching was soon called the “Irish learning.” Still it must be said in qualification that the renaissance at the court of Charlemagne was a rather childish attempt to unite antiquity with theology. Excepting in the case of Scotus Erigena, the revival was very feeble. It consisted of a new effort to understand Augustine, to master the simplest rules of logic, and to think out dogma by means of Hellenism. The period from 800 to 1000 is called the Benedictine Age, because learning was entirely in the hands of the Benedictine monks. From the impulse given by the Irish scholars many celebrated monastic and cathedral schools originated, like those of Tours, Fulda, Rheims, Chartres, and the school at Paris. From the many monastic schools emerge the names of Alcuin of York, Rhabanus Maurus of Fulda, and Gerbert at Rheims. But among these scholars the only one of philosophical importance is John Scotus Erigena.

=John Scotus Erigena (810–880): Life and Teaching.= When his contemporaries were only lisping at philosophy and his immediate successors were absorbed in disconnected problems, Erigena worked out a connected system. Like Augustine, Erigena stood far in advance of his age. He was not only the one great thinker of the revival of Charlemagne, but he was one of the most remarkable personalities of the Middle Ages. Born in Ireland, he had the benefit of an education in the schools of that centre of learning, which he could not have obtained on the continent of Europe. In 853 he was called by Charles the Bald to carry on the work begun by Alcuin under Charlemagne. Three centuries after his death the church condemned him as a heretic (1209) on account of his writings on predestination and transubstantiation. His learning was so great that he has been called “the Origen of the North.” He read Greek, and this was a rare accomplishment in those days, for even Alcuin scarcely knew the Greek alphabet. His most notable original work is _De Divisione Naturae_, which was neo-Platonism in Christian dress. His most influential work was his translation of the _pseudo-Dionysius, the Areopagite._ It proved, in fact, to be one of the most influential books of this period, and was instrumental on account of its large circulation in propagating neo-Platonism in the Middle Ages.

Erigena was neither a scholastic nor a dialectical theologian. He neither assailed nor defended church doctrine. He calmly pushed neo-Platonism to the borders of pantheism. He was an Irishman with a Greek mind, a neo-Platonist under the veil of a Christian mystic. No churchman ever expressed neo-Platonism so frankly. The writings from which Erigena got his doctrine are called the _Pseudo-Dionysius_ writings because the authorship was falsely attributed to a companion of St. Paul, Dionysius the Areopagite. They were, however, probably written in the fifth century, for they are essentially neo-Platonic and border on pantheism. Erigena translated them at the request of Charles the Bald, and their appearance produced great astonishment in Europe (858–860). Erigena’s own work, _De Divisione Naturae_, is an extreme pantheistic statement of the doctrine in the _Pseudo-Dionysius_. Briefly stated Erigena’s teaching is as follows. God is an incomprehensible being and can be described only in negative terms (negative theology). (See chapter on Philo.) God is the same as Being or Nature, and He unfolds Himself as a fourfold series. These are: God, the world in God, the world outside God, God after the world has returned to Him. God contains in Himself through the Logos all the primordial types of things formed before creation. Creation is the logical unfolding of particulars from the universal. Immortality consists in the particulars again becoming universal. In the types of things God is creating Himself, and they are graded from God down to concrete objects. But all will finally return to God, and Erigena thought he found analogies of this return everywhere in nature.

=The Greek Principle which Erigena formulated for the Middle Ages.= These details of the teaching of Erigena are unimportant except as they throw light upon that Greek underlying principle which he formulated for the Middle Ages. _The Real is the Universal. The more universal a thing is, the more real and therefore the more perfect it is._ If we have an idea of a universal, that universal has existence because it is universal. The idea of God is universal, therefore God exists. The idea of the world is a universal, but not so universal as the idea of God, and therefore not so surely existent. But the idea of the world has more reality than the idea of a tree. Mediæval philosophy becomes from this time on _a logical theism_. In the case of Erigena it is a logical pantheism. The world is a logical mosaic. Real dependence is logical dependence, and what we in modern times call the causes and effects between natural objects are regarded by the Middle Ages as sufficiently explained if put in logical arrangement. This is the core of mediæval thinking, and the student will fail to understand the civilization of the Middle Ages unless he grasps this central principle.

But this realizing of the logical universal is Greek and betrays the fundamentally Greek character of mediæval civilization. The objective spiritual church has merely taken the place of objective nature. Mediæval history is a conflict between Greek universalism and the Christian conception of the individual. In Erigena the Greek element appeared in overwhelming dominance. Erigena is a smaller Augustine――Augustine uncontrolled by great masses of thought and uninspired by practical ideals of building up the church. Erigena is a “belated Gnostic.” Why was it that his neo-Platonic pantheism did not overcome entirely the individualistic element in Christian dogma? Why, on the contrary, did it bring out far-reaching issues of conflict when a century later the significance of his teaching was understood? Because inherently and fundamentally in the nature of the German peoples, as appearing in their customs and laws, was the conviction of the rights of the individual personality. In the teaching of the Christian fathers the element of the spiritual personality found a deep echo in the German nature. The German could tolerate and did actually live under the later church doctrine of a moderate realism; but the measured calm of the Greek pantheistic conception of Erigena deprived the German of all his inherited ideals. Thus when intellectual activity was aroused a century later, the conflict became hot over the issue in Erigena’s doctrine. Erigena was the forerunner of the scholastics. It was he who tossed the apple of discord among the thinkers of the Middle Ages.

=The Last Century of the Early Period= (900–1000). The century following Erigena was one of demoralization. All learning declined with the renewed invasions from the north, east, and west. The empire of Charlemagne was broken up and the Papacy temporarily disappeared. There is a persistent tradition that the Christians at this time believed the end of the world to be near. This has been proved to be a legend, but back of it lies the truth that there was a fresh rise of piety which lasted until 1300. With this movement we enter upon the next period of the Middle Ages.