Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

The Latin Tradition of Logic to 1100 25
Theodulf’s logical project differs from Alcuin’s in the emphasis it places on
argument, and its lack of interest in the more metaphysically-inclined logic of the
Categories. I once argued [Marenbon, 1997], using the chronology of Alcuin’s work
established by his biographer, Donald Bullough [Bullough, 1991, 37; Bullough,
1997, 581-2] that the first medieval logician was not Alcuin, but Theodulf. But
it turns out to be more plausible to retain the traditional dating of Dialectic to
786-90 [Bohn, 2004], and there is evidence, in any case that Theodulf made use
of it [Opus Caroli, 1998, 61; English version in Freeman, 2003, 88-9]. Despite the
difference in their main aims and interests as logicians, both Alcuin and Theodulf
are alike in attaching logic to the official policy of the Carolingian Empire, as part
of a scheme of Christian education and the defence of Christian doctrine. Between
them, Alcuin and Theodulf map out the three main ways in which logic would be
valued throughout the early medieval ages: as one of the Liberal Arts, themselves
accepted as the beginnings of an ultimately Christian educational scheme; as a
tool in theology; and as a weapon in the fight against heresy.
Theodulf, Alcuin and Alcuin’s pupils
A merging of the approaches of Alcuin and Theodulf may be indicated by the
contents of the earliest surviving logical manuscript, MS Rome, Biblioteca Padri
Maristi, A. II. 1, which belonged to an associate of Alcuin’s, Bishop Leidrad, who
died c. 814. Along with the Ten Categories, Porphyry’s Isagoge and extracts from
Alcuin’s Dialectic, it includes Boethius’s first commentary on On Interpretation
and Apuleius’s Peri Hermeneias [Delisle, 1896]. The other piece of evidence that
survives about interest in logic at the turn of the ninth century very much reflects
Alcuin’s interests, perhaps because it is found in a set of passages connected with
his pupil, Candidus Wizo [ed., Marenbon, 1981, 151-66]. The logical pieces are
mostly linked to the Ten Categories (I, XIV, XV), though one (XII) takes an
Aristotelian passage from the theologian Claudianus Mamertus, and another (XIII)
may be taken from Boethius’s Categories commentary, though it can perhaps be
explained as an elaboration of Cassiodorus.
3.2 Eriugena and the Ninth Century
([Marenbon, 1981, 67-87])
John Scottus Eriugena, who worked in the 850s and 860s at the court of Charlemagne’s
grandson, Charles the Bald, dominates the logic, as well as the philosophy
and theology, of the ninth century. As in all his work, Eriugena’s logic shows a
strange mixture between ideas that fit closely with the Latin tradition, and ideas
that are foreign to it, introduced by the fact that John learned Greek and was
deeply influenced by Greek Christian Neoplatonism, combined with an intellectual
temperament inclined to take such elements to their extremes. In order to
appreciate this combination, it is important to place John in the context both
of his Latin predecessors and contemporaries, and the gloss traditions that be-