MIGNE.APP

Patrologia Latina · Vol. 122 ·

COMMENTARII IN EVANGELIUM SECUNDUM JOANNEM

PL 122, coll. 1243–1244  ·  Latin from the Migne printing  ·  First English translation  ·  column numbers follow the original plates, not the Garnier reprint

John Scottus Eriugena

Joannes Scotus Erigena

c. 800 – c. 877

Irish scholar and master at the court of Charles the Bald, and the one Latin writer of his century who read Greek theology in Greek. He translated the Pseudo-Dionysius, Maximus the Confessor and Gregory of Nyssa into Latin, and out of them built his own system in the Periphyseon. His treatise on predestination was condemned in his lifetime and the Periphyseon long after it. His commentary on the Gospel of John survives only in fragments, from a single manuscript at Laon.

Commentarii in Evangelium secundum Joannem

1243BSanctus Ambrosius per subjectum ordinem enumerat memoratas orationes: orationes, obsecrationes, postulationes, gratiarum actiones. Orationi subponit, quando bona nobis postulamus, obsecrationi, quando absolutionem a malis, postulationi pugnam contra omnia adversa. Et praescribit, scire nos debere hoc facere, quando in unum convenimus. Sanctus Augustinus ita: precationes, orationes, interpellationes, sive, ut vestri Floss, var. lect. Cod., uri; f. nostri, ut paulo post? codices habent, postulationes, gratiarum actiones. Et dicit: quas omnes Floss, var. lect. Cod. omnis. sive paene omnes Floss, var. lect. Cod. omnis. frequentat ecclesia in solempnitate sacramentorum. Precatio est omnis oratio ante illud quod agitur in dominica mensa; oratio est quicquid postea agitur usque ad communionem; 1244Binterpellatio sive postulatio est quaudo populus benedicitur; gratiarum actio omnia concludit. Ubi sanctus Augustinus dicit precationes, nostri codices habent obsecrationes. Obsecrationi, ut dictum est, subposita est postulatio Floss, var. lect. Cod. postolatio. a sancto Ambrosio pro absolutione peccatorum. Cetera uno modo nominamus, ut pra . . . . . . . st Floss, var. lect. Unum aut duo verba desunt · ubi exstabant, membrana abscissa est. Forte legendum ut praedictum est. de sancto Augustino. Eandemque vim obtinent, quam sanctus Ambrosius subposuit eis et in celebratione sacramentorum et in ceteris officiis. In omnibus, quae scribo, suspendor virorum ac piorum Patrum judicio. Interim dico, quae sentio. Quae aguntur in celebratione missae, in sacramento dominicae passionis aguntur.

Cetera desunt.

Commentaries on the Gospel according to John

1243BSaint Ambrose enumerates in the following order the prayers that were mentioned: prayers, supplications, requests, thanksgivings. Under prayer he places, when we request good things for ourselves, under supplication, when we request absolution from evils, under request, the fight against all adversities. And he prescribes that we ought to know to do this when we come together into one. Saint Augustine has it thus: precations, prayers, interpellations, or, as your codices have, requests, thanksgivings. And he says: all of which, or nearly all, the church frequents in the solemnity of the sacraments. Precation is every prayer before that which is done at the Lord's table; prayer is whatever is done afterwards up to communion; 1244Binterpellation or request is when the people is blessed; thanksgiving concludes all. Where saint Augustine says precations, our codices have supplications. Under supplication, as has been said, the request for the absolution of sins is placed by saint Ambrose. The rest we name in one way, as pra . . . . . . . st One or two words are lacking; where they stood, the parchment has been cut away. Perhaps read ut praedictum est, "as was said before". concerning saint Augustine. And they hold the same force which saint Ambrose placed under them, both in the celebration of the sacraments and in the other offices. In all that I write, I hang upon the judgment of men and of pious Fathers. Meanwhile I say what I think. The things which are done in the celebration of the mass are done in the sacrament of the Lord's passion.

The rest is lacking.

On this text

Cruces for this work — where the plate is defective or the reading uncertain →

A short fragment on the kinds of prayer named in 1 Timothy 2:1, comparing how Ambrose and Augustine divide them and how the prayers of the Mass fall under each. Floss printed it among the additions at the end of his 1853 edition. The apparatus at the foot of the Latin is Floss's, not Migne's: his Variae lectiones give the manuscript's reading where he printed something else, and are marked “Floss, var. lect.”