Vincent of Beauvais, to take but a single instance, says
about him, is all derived, including the epitaph, through
the channel of Helinand, from William of Malmesbury.
William has, in common with Asser, just three points,
(a) that John was a learned man, (b) that he was invited
from Gaul by king Alfred, and (c) that he taught in England;
in other words exactly what Asser relates about John the
companion of Grimbald, with the exception of the notice
that he was priest and monk: it has nothing corresponding to what he says of John the Saxon. Apart from the
question of nationality, the latter was made abbat of
Athelney, and his life was attempted by the servants of
two Gaulish brethren of the monastery; whereas John the
Scot, according to William of Malmesbury, went not to
Athelney but to Malmesbury; he was not abbat, simply a teacher; was not wounded at the instigation of monks,
but was actually killed by the boys whom he taught.
The only point in common between the two is the name John.[1]
6. With the epitaph quoted by William as commemorating this sanctus sophista loannes, we may connect a notice c Hist univ which is contained in a chronicle referred to by du Boulay Pans. 2. 443. ag fa e Historia a Roberto Rege ad Mortem Philippi I:
In dialectica hi potentes extiterunt sophistae, loannes qui eandem artem sophisticam vocalem esse disseruit, Robertus Parisiacensis, Eocelinus Compendiensis, Arnulphus Laudunensis. Hi loannis fuerunt sectatores qui etiam quamplure habuerunt auditores.
M. Hauréau rejects the comparison with the Malmesbury inscription, but he is in the meshes of the old snare about John the Saxon. His caution in refusing to apply the inscription as a help to explain the Paris chronicle will be respected; but when he urges on other grounds that
- ↑ [Mr. Stevenson observes, intr. to Asser, p. cxii. n. 2, that bishop Stubbs has, by one of his rare lapses, confounded Malmesbury’s account of John the Scot with that of John the Old Saxon in the Life’ by Asser ; but he has not detected the source of this confusion in Ingulf.]
