 Eriugena had a justified reputation among his contemporaries as a man of considerable learning. Florus calls him scholasticus et eruditus (PL 119: 103a) and Anastasius the Librarian (c. 810–c.878), the Vatican librarian of the day, marveled at the fact that this “barbarian” (vir barbarus) from a remote land knew Greek. (Brennan, 1986) Two partial commentaries (c. 840–c.850) on De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (The Marriage of Philolology and Mercury), the liberal arts handbook of the late Latin author, Martianus Capella, survive from Eriugena’s period as royal master, as well as the Biblical glosses, Glossae Divinae Historiae, all of which attest to his skill as a grammaticus. Eriugena has a rich and eclectic knowledge of the liberal arts tradition, including Isidore, Cassiodorus, and Cicero. He had a reputation for dialectic, as his opponents recognized when they criticized him for bringing his dialectical skills to bear on theological discussion. Thus, his critic Prudentius remarked: “Your Capella has led you into a labyrinth, because you have tied yourself more to the meditation of his work than to the truth of the Gospel” (PL 115: 1294a). Nevertheless, Eriugena continues the approach of Alcuin to make the arts more than mere instruments but to connect them to wisdom and to point to the unity of knowledge; thus he is both a contributor and a catalyst for the “new wave” unleashed by the adoption of Priscian and Martianus Capella (see Contreni, 1992) 