4. This story is told by William in three separate works, in the Gesta Regum, the Gesta Pontificum, and in a letter addressed to his friend Peter. The second of these accounts also rëappears, nearly word for word, in what is known as the Second Chronicle of Simeon of Durham; but this has no claim to be regarded as an independent authority.[1] Of William's three narratives, that contained in the epistle to Peter, which is entirely occupied with the subject of John Scotus, is the most complete, and I give it here as printed by Gale, e cod. Thuaneo ms., among the Testimonia prefixed to his edition of the De Divisione Naturae.[2] From the point in the course of this letter, at which William's other works introduce the narrative about John Scotus and thenceforward run parallel with it, I give at the foot of the page a collation of them as well.
Petro suo Willelmus suus divinae philosophiae participium.
Fraternae dilectioni morem, frater amantisime, geris, quod me tam ardua consultatione dignaris. Est enim praesumtio caritatis, quod me tanto muneri non imparem arbitraris. Praecipis enim ut mittam in litteras, unde Ioannes Scottus oriundus, ubi defunctus fuerit, quem auctorem libri, qui περὶ φύσεων vocatur, communis opinio consentit: simulque, quia de libro illo sinister rumor aspersit, brevi scripto elucidem, quae potissimum fidei videantur adversari catholicae. Et primum quidem ut puto probe faciam si promte expediam, quia me talium rerum veritas non lateat: alterum vero, ut hominem orbi Latino merito scientiae notissimum, diuque vita et invidia defunctum, in ius vocem, altius est quam vires meae spirare audeant. Nam et ego sponte refugio summorum virorum
- ↑ The passage is not reprinted in the edition of Simeon in the Monumenta historica Britannica: see vol. i. 684 note b. It may be read in Twysden's Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores decem 148 sq., 1652 folio [and in T. Arnold's edition of Simeon's Works, 2. 115-117; 1885]. On the character of the Second Chronicle see the preface to the Monumenta, p. 88, and Hardy's Descriptive Catalogue, 2. 174 sqq.
- ↑ [It is also found in the Royal MS. append. 85 f. 25 b in the British Museum, which was written in the eleventh or twelfth century and is certainly not autograph, as is asserted in the index to Hamilton's edition of the Gesta pontificum, 531 b. In the first edition of this book I printed a collation of this manuscript, but the text has since been published from it by Stubbs in his preface to the Gesta regum, 1. pp. cxliii-cxlvi.]
