On Godescalc

I first heard of Godescalc (or Gottschalk, or Gothescalcus) of Orbais, my 9th-century namesake (or pseudonymsake, maybe - my real name is far less exotic), a few years back when Elberry sent me an e-mail declaring he'd stumbled across a 9th-century prior incarnation of me. He enclosed a quote from Helen Waddell's book The Wandering Scholars on the fellow. I now have the book myself, and shall quote liberally for your edification. Helen Waddell's style is more fun to read aloud than to read silently; in fact, I got weird looks on the bus this morning when reading it (with great relish) to a coworker.

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[Walafrid] was a friend of the doomed Gottschalk, and if his name is hidden in the ascription "Ad Amicum" - Walafrid does not often leave his poems anonymous - one would gladly believe the imprisonment lighted by some such tenderness, for of tenderness Gottschalk had little and needed much. There is no halo about that scarred and tormented figure, unless the dark flame of his black and passionate sincerity. He was brought an oblate, like the child Samuel, to the monastery at Fulda, a knight's son with restless blood in him, and growing up fought for liberty like a caged panther. At sixteen a council of bishops granted his appeal, but his abbot, Hrabanus Maurus, strong on prerogative, carried the case to the Emperor, and Gottschalk was doomed, "condemned for life to the order of St. Benedict." But there are other ways of escape; at eighteen Gottschalk discovered St. Augustine, and wrung from him the secret of his passionate peace; in 835 he was ordained priest. There are natures doomed to be unfortunate, to find the bitter in the sweet; the doctrine which he wrested from Augustine and thereafter preached through France and Italy to the terror of many was predestination not only to grace, but to damnation. The Church in consternation brought in John Scotus to refute him, and though, "before the Irish philosopher could be checked, he had refuted Sin and Hell," it took them three centuries to find it out. Gottschalk's book went to the flames first; he burnt it himself after torture, like one dead. They condemned him to solitary confinement; but somehow this indomitable malignant secured ink and parchment and the book appears again. There followed further accusations, further vengeance on this man found hereticus et incorrigibilus. Twenty years later, in 870, the long misery ended. Gottschalk, dying, begged for the sacrament from which he had so long been barred. It was promised him, and Christian burial, after he should sign a refutation drawn up for him by Hincmar. He refused, and died without the sacraments. "A worthy end to such a life," says Hincmar, speaking more wisely than he knew. There is no grace about Gottschalk; he had seen truth and it blinded him.

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Other accounts of Godescalc's life can be found at the Gottschalk homepage and, of course, wikipedia, where one can also find information on Hincmar of Reims, the guy who had him hauled before a kangaroo synod and then locked up until he went insane; and John Scotus Erigena, who wrote a book in refutation of him and who shouldn't be confused with John Duns Scotus the scholastic theologian.