Our aim is to build an up-to-date bibliography. Please send us details of recently published work if you would like to feature it on this site.

NEW RESOURCES – a work in progress. Latest update October 2024

The following resources are intended to be informative. The entries have not been formatted according to any in-house style.

“Reading John Scottus Eriugena’s Carmina as Devotional Poetry” by Connor M. Ritchie in Medieval Mystical Theology, v. 33, n. 1 (2024). An interesting challenge to Dutton & Herren’s political reading of the poems. The PDF can be found here.

And here is Don Duclow’s second Variorum volume, Engaging Eriugena, Eckhart and Cusanus (Routledge, 2024). As Duclow notes, “the book is Cusa-centric with only two essays on Eriugena – including one on Nicholas’ reading of Periphyseon I.” Here is a link with the details: https://www.routledge.com/Engaging-Eriugena-Eckhart-and-Cusanus/Duclow/p/book/9781032443904?srsltid=AfmBOoprWSxB1jRS279gcZhITGRRlBK5Tv6tuViwhXbtELxcAYCwL3Oq.

Matthew A. Stanley, 2017: “Christ, Creation, and Humanity: An Eco-Theological Reading of John Scottus Eriugena”
Abstract
“This paper will seek to show how Eriugena’s theology puts humanity in relationship to creation not in simple domination but in a role of serving to unite creation’s divisions within itself in order that creation may be offered up toGod in the final return of all things back into God. This claim will be sharpened further by Eriugena’s use of the co-inherence of Jesus Christ and humanity such that Christ the Eternal Word becomes the model human in whom all things are united. Because Eriugena’s thought turns on the movement from unity to division to the return into unity, it lends itself to seeing the Gospel as the proclamation of the One in whom these divisions are overcome and Who defines the cosmic story in which we all participate”.
Access: https://www.academia.edu/114424340/Christ_Creation_and_Humanity_An_Eco_Theological_Reading_of_John_Scottus_Eriugena

James Sikkema “In an Ineffable Way and in Infinite Ways:Thinking Ex Nihilo Creatio with John Scotus Eriugena”
Abstract
The concept of creatio ex nihilo challenges the Parmenidean dictum ex nihilo nihil fit by never thinking of any things as absolutely existing, and, therefore, as having being from non-being. That is, anything that is said ‘to be’ has being, by having come to be of Nothing. If God and creation are not two things, but one and the same, then God’s creating ex nihilo is nothing other than God creating ex Deo. God is the very nothingness of which things come to be. God is, thus, not to be thought of as some absolutely existing being or entity by-itself, but as nothing other than the creative process itself whereby what comes to be thingly is an expression of Nothing whatsoever. Rather than nothing being thought of as the diametrical opposite of being, then, nothing contains the concepts of both being and non-being relatively; that is, becoming is the primary concept of no-thing whatsoever. Thus, God ceaselessly creates and is created in what God creates precisely because God is not one thing and the cosmos another. This alleviates the tension in ‘perfect being theology’ between a transcendent, unified, and self-same or absolute being on the one hand, and the immanent, multiple, and differentiated contingent things alleged to be somehow ontologically dependent on such a source, on the other. By thinking that transcendence is nothing other than the immanent process of creating irreducibly complex things, God is never thought itself-by-itself, but always multiplex in creation; by-itself, Absolute Being means nothing whatsoever. John Scotus Eriugena’s thought is enlisted because of its rather Heraclitean appeal in thinking about the problem of the one and the many; because of his insistence that what absolutely ‘is’ is not and therefore is nothing other than what multifariously comes to have being in time and place.
Access: https://www.academia.edu/5789974/In_an_Ineffable_Way_and_in_Infinite_Ways_Thinking_Ex_Nihilo_Creatio_with_John_Scotus_Eriugena

Connor M Ritchie, “A Review of A Companion to John Scottus Eriugena”. Medieval Mystical Theology (2022)
Access:
https://www.academia.edu/98478184/A_Review_of_A_Companion_to_John_Scottus_Eriugena

Iohannes Scottus Eriugena, Carmina, De imagine, Michael W. Herren, Andrew Dunning, Chiara O. Tommasi, Giovanni Mandolino (eds), Brepols, 2020 (probably libraries will purchase this — expensive). For information: https://www.brepols.net/products/IS-9782503551746-1

Anton Vydra, “Eriugena’s Angels: A Case Study of the Role of Imagination in Spirituality,” in The Modern Experience of the Religious, ed. Nassim Bravo & Jon Stewart (Brill, 2023), pp. 139-160. Link to information: https://brill.com/display/book/9789004544604/BP000015.xml

Riccardo Pizzinato, “Vision and Christomimesis in the Ruler Portrait of the Codex Aureus of St. Emmeram,” Gesta, vol. 57, n. 2 (Spring 2018), pp. 145-170. Accessible online: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/698840

Willemien Otten, Thinking Nature and the Nature of Things

Dermot Moran and Adrian Guiu, “John Scottus Eriugena“, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (first published 2003)

Beukes, J., 2021, ‘The 50-year jubileum of the Society for the Promotion of Eriugenian Studies in the John Scottus Eriugena (815–877) research, 1970–2020’, HTS Teologiese Studies/ Theological Studies 77(4), a6456. https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v77i4.6456
This article charts the history and work of the Society for the Promotion of Eriugenian Studies (SPES), which celebrated its 50-year jubile in 2020. After a brief introduction to the thought of John Scottus Eriugena (815–877), with emphasis on his primary text (in five volumes), Periphyseon, written between 864 and 866 and condemned as heretical in 1050, 1059, 1210 and finally in 1225, the development of SPES over the past five decades is surveyed in detail and connected to an outstanding work published in the Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition series in Leiden (2020), under the editorship of Adrian Guiu (A Companion to John Scottus Eriugena). The article is descriptive and analytical in its presentation of the relevant history of ideas and synthetical in its attempt to coherently integrate the most recent secondary texts on the relevant philosophical themes in Eriugena research.

Individual contributions at the SPES conferences since 1970 are listed at: https://www.ontology.co/biblio/eriugena-editions.htm (by Corrazon 2019:18–24)

Michael W. Herren with the assistance of R.W. Hunt Curator Andrew Dunning, Iohannis Scotti Eriugenae Carmina. Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis 167. Brepols: Turnhout, 2020. In the same volume, Giovanni Mandolino and Chiara O. Tommasi, De Imagine, Eriugena’s translation of Gregory of Nyssa’s De Opificio Hominis.

Eleni Ponirakis, Echoes of Eriugena in the Old English Boethius, in Neophilologus, volume 105, pp. 279–288 (2021); open access at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11061-021-09674-w

Mihai Grigoraş, “Theophany and Asceticism in John Scottus Eriugena”, accessed at:
https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ress-2020-0019

Richard Kearney, My Way to Theopoetics Through Eriugena, Literature and Theology, Volume 33, Issue 3, September 2019, pp. 233–240; https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/frz019
This piece charts the author’s journey to theopoetics through the work of John Scotus Eriugena. Focusing on the key role played by Celtic mysticism in the development of a panentheist vision of things, the essay offers a poetical and ecological approach to our philosophical rethinking of divinity, nature and creation. It concludes with a tribute to the hilarious notion of a ‘running God’.

Eoghan Mac Aogáin, Eriugena: Medieval Irish Philosopher, Poet, and Translator 2017 (Amazon link:
https://www.amazon.com/Eriugena-Medieval-Irish-Philosopher-Translator/dp/1782011919

Willemien Otten, “Creation and Gender in Eriugena, Hidegard, and Hadewijch”, Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, February 2023, paper on request at: https://pims.ca/publication/isbn-978-0-88844-737-1/

María Jesús Soto-Bruna, “Religious Vocabulary on Creation: Eriugena, Hildegard of Bingen, Eckhart”, Religions 2023, 14(8), 1024; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14081024

Jacques Darras, John Scotus Eriugena at Laon & Other Poems, trans. Richard Sieburth; this is the title poem in the volume – read more at: https://www.poetrybooks.co.uk/products/john-scotus-eriugena-at-laon-other-poems-by-jacques-darras-trans-by-richard-sieburth

Favourite DIB lives: John Scottus Eriugena, medieval scholar, 06 May 2020, selected by Dr Joseph Flahive of the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from Celtic Sources. John Scottus Eriugena was a prolific medieval scholar of Latin and Greek, ‘rediscovered’ in the nineteenth century. His biography is presented here as part of our ‘Favourite DIB lives’ series chosen by in-house academics and friends of the RIA. The site produces an article by Thomas O’Loughlin.
Access at: https://www.ria.ie/news/dictionary-irish-biography/favourite-dib-lives-john-scottus-eriugena-medieval-scholar

Deirdre Carabine, ‘Eriugena’, in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion, Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro (eds), Wiley-Blackwell, 2017

Sergei N. Sushkov and David Jasper, Being and Creation in the Theology of John Scottus Eriugena: An Approach to a New Way of Thinking, Pickwick Publications, 2017 (ebook)
Despite his prominent role in the formation of Christian thought, John Scottus Eriugena still remains an enigmatic figure whose background and potential arouse a great deal of scholarly interest. This is true especially today, when faith seeks to regenerate: his honesty and profundity encourage us in our search for the authentic teaching of Christ. As a theologian who strongly believes in human dignity as equal to that of the imago dei, Eriugena helps us meet Christ again and follow him towards a new horizon of being. What makes Eriugena’s theology unique is his innovative approach to theological thinking, which is to be properly understood, as argued in this book, in terms of the paradigmatic shift from metaphysics to dialectic. The way we think, while trying to adopt and follow the truth of revelation so as to get freed from the world of finite things, cannot actually dispense with a dialectical treatment of contradiction. And Eriugena is explicit about this, which allows him to win a reputation as the “Hegel of the ninth century” and to make us look at our faith anew in coherence with such pivotal ideas as the divine unity, right reason, and return to the reality of creation.

Donald F. Duclow, Engaging Eriugena, Eckhart and Cusanus, Routledge, 2023
The essays explore Eriugena, Eckhart and Cusanus as bold thinkers deeply engaged with their times and culture. John Scottus Eriugena, Meister Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa are key figures in the medieval Christian Neoplatonic tradition. This book focuses on their engagement with practical, experiential issues and controversies. Eriugena revises Genesis’ Adam and Eve narrative and makes sexual difference and overcoming it central to his Periphyseon. Eckhart’s Annunciation sermons urge his hearers to give birth to God’s son within their lives, and he develops a distinctive approach to pain and suffering. His radical preaching on the Eucharist and mystical union was judged heretical but was later taken up by Nicholas of Cusa. Coins and banking became key symbols in Cusanus’ exploration of humanity as created in God’s image, and he used mechanical clocks in reflecting on time and eternity. “Engagement” also describes these thinkers’ reception of their predecessors and how later readers appropriated their works. Eriugena struggled with the legacy of Augustine and the Greek Fathers. Eckhart’s theology of suffering provoked varied responses from his students Henry Suso, Johannes Tauler and the twentieth-century therapist Ursula Fleming. Cusanus provides the volume’s lynchpin as two articles analyse his reading of Eriugena and Eckhart, and a third discusses how he deftly countered Johannes Wenck’s accusations of heresy.

Adrian Guiu, A Companion to John Scottus Eriugena, Brill, 2019.
John Scottus Eriugena (d. ca. 877) is regarded as the most important philosopher and theologian in the Latin West from the death of Boethius until the thirteenth century. He incorporated his understanding of Latin sources, Ambrose, Augustine, Boethius and Greek sources, including the Cappadocian Fathers, Pseudo-Dionysius, and Maximus Confessor, into a metaphysics structured on Aristotle’sCategories, from which he developed Christian Neoplatonist theology that continues to stimulate 21st-century theologians.
This collection of essays provides an overview of the latest scholarship on various aspects of Eriugena’s thought and writings, including his Irish background, his use of Greek theologians, his Scripture hermeneutics, his understanding of Aristotelian logic, Christology, and the impact he had on contemporary and later theological traditions. Contributors: David Albertson, Joel Barstad, John Contreni, Christophe Erismann, John Gavin, Adrian Guiu, Michael Harrington, Catherine Kavanagh, A. Kijewska, Stephen Lahey, Elena Lloyd-Sidle, Bernard McGinn, Ernesto Sergio Mainoldi, Dermot Moran, Giulio D’Onofrio, Willemien Otten, and Alfred Siewers.

Sebastian Florian Weiner, Eriugenas negative Ontologie, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2007.
Recently, there has been an upsurge of interest in the work Periphyseon of the early medieval philosopher John Scot Eriugena. Previous research has classified the book either as a piece of Neoplatonic philosophy or as part of the Latin dialectic tradition, which has led to one-sided interpretations. The present publication focuses instead on the philosophical claims defended in the Periphyseon itself, examines its originality and discusses the soundness of its argumentation. As a result, a hitherto unnoticed basic thought of the work has been uncovered, namely the concept of a negative ontology, according to which all substance is completely incomprehensible. This notion constitutes the greatest innovation of Eriugena’s thought. In keeping with his negative ontology, Eriugena downgrades the fourfold division of nature that he had presented at the beginning of his work. A critical survey of the current readings of Eriugena as a Neoplatonist and idealist completes this book.

Bibliographies

Mary Brennan’s extensive annotated bibliography (A Guide to Eriugenian Studies) covered works written between 1930-1987. This is the continuation of her earlier work: Brennan, Mary, “A bibliography of publications in the field of Eriugena studies 1800–1975”, Studi Medievali, 3rd series, 18 (1977): 401–447.Gerd Van Riel (scanned at Google Books but we will be uploading the full text here soon), A Bibliographical Survey of Eriugenian Studies 1987-1995

Adriana Farenga and Ernesto Sergio Mainoldi, A Bibliography of Eriugenian Works 2000-2016 (Ernesto Mainoldi is currently working on a 2017-2019 update)

A partially-annotated bibliography (fairly recent), can be found at: https://www.ontology.co/biblio/eriugena-biblio-one.htm

A useful resource on the works of Eriugena at CELT, Corpus of Electronic Texts