Side by side with the career of Alcuin, of which much is known, may be placed that of another scholar who was at least equally influential, but of whose life little is known. John the Scot, whose thought exercised a profound influence on the ages after his death, was one of the Irish scholars whom the famous schools of that island produced as late as the ninth century. He became attached to the court of Charles the Bald, as Alcuin had been to that of Charles the Great. He became like Alcuin a prominent defender of the faith, being invited by Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, to answer the monk Gottschalk's exaggerated doctrine of predestination, which went much farther than S. Augustine, and might be described as Calvinist before Calvin; but his arguments were also considered unsound, and his opinions were condemned in later synods. The argument that, evil being the negation of good, God could not know it, for with Him to know is to cause, was certainly weak if not formally heretical, and his subtleties seemed to the theologians of his time to be merely ineptitudes. He was also, it is at least probable, engaged in the controversy on the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist which began about this time, originating in the treatise of Paschasius Radbertus, _de Sacramento Corporis et Sanguinis Christi_. In 1050 a treatise bearing John the Scot's name was condemned; but it seems that this was really written by Ratramnus of Corbie. The view of Radbert was that which was {171} afterwards formalised into Transubstantiation. The view attributed to John was a clear denial of any materialising doctrine of the Sacrament. Later writers say that John returned to England, taught in the abbey school at Malmesbury, the famous school originated by Irish monks and illustrated by the fame of S. Aldhelm, and there died. His chief work was the _de Divisione Naturae_, in which he seems to anticipate much later philosophic argument (notably that of S. Anselm and Descartes as to the existence of God) and to have been the precursor if not the founder of Nominalism. With John the Scot it is clear that both the old literature and philosophy survived and were fruitful and that new interests, which would carry theology into further developments, were arising. A revival of learning was naturally the growth of the monastic system; but that system was itself far from secure at the time of which we speak. [Sidenote: The Benedictine rule.]