154 RABANUS MAURUa CHAP, to attribute to Rabanus. 1 It is right to add that his conclu- III v_ i ' ^ sion has received the support of M. Haureau. According to this assumption, Rabanus, in addition to his other distin- guished claims, appears as the author of a profound and able refutation of the reality of Universals. Unfortunately, however, two material facts, since pointed out by Kaulich and Prantl, seem fatal to such an hypothesis. Rabanus was already sixty-seven years of age when, in 844, he com- posed his treatise De Universe, in which, as we have before stated, 2 he follows Alcuin in dividing logic into dialectic and rhetoric ; but in the manuscript in question logic is sub- divided into grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic a far from unimportant difference and one which Prantl does not hesi- tate to refer to the influence of the views put forth by John Scotus respecting the relation of grammar and rhetoric to dialectic. 3 Again, it is evident that the commentary is de- signed as a reply to certain realistic doctrines, and, apart from the controversy raised by John Scotus, we have no evidence that this famous controversy was agitated in Frank- land before the second half of the ninth century. But the arrival of John in Frankland belongs to the years 840-6, during which time Rabanus, as we shall shortly see, was leading a life of religious seclusion, and tranquilly compos- ing his De Universe, in perfect ignorance, it may be presumed, of that new conception of logic which was being expounded at the court of Charles the Bald. It seems accordingly in the highest degree improbable that either at this period or in the years of his extreme old age, when "busied with the duties of his episcopate and the refutation of Gotteschalk, he should have permitted himself to become involved in a sharp philosophical controversy, have reconsidered his classi- fication of the arts and sciences, and composed a treatise altogether dissimilar to anything to be found in his acknow- ledged writings. 4 The commentary in question was probably
An account of tliia gloss will be found in the author's History of the
University of Cambridge, pp. 50-4.
See supra, p. 87.
s Gesch. d. Loyik, ii 88.
' Allerdings lasst sich nicht direct beweisen, dass Hrabanus denselben
umuoglich verfasst haben konne, aber als selir unwahrseheinlich miissen wir es immerhin bezeichuen.' Ibid. ' Der Gegensatz von Noniinalisten und Ilealisten beginnt sich zwar im ucuuten Jahrhundert zu entwickeln, aber ihn bis auf Rabauus au?zudehnen erscheiut uns unrecbtfertigt.' Kaulicb, Gesch. d.Schol.' Phil, i 62-3.
