\ 174. RATKAMNUS. 747
queries in regard to the cynocephali, and had asked in return for an opinion respecting their position in the scale of being. Ratramnus replied that from what lie knew about them he con sidered them degenerated descendants of Adam, although the Church generally classed them with beasts. They may even receive baptism by being rained upon.1
2. How Christ was born.2 In this treatise Ratramnus refutes the theory of some Germans that Christ issued from the body of the Virgin Mary in some abnormal way.3 He maintains, on the contrary, that the birth was one of the ordinary kind, ex cept that his mother was before it, during it, and after it a virgin,4 because her womb was closed. He compares Christ's birth to his issuing from the sealed tomb and going through closed doors.5 The book is usually regarded as a reply to the De partu, virginis of Radbertus, but there is good reason to con sider it independent of and even earlier than the latter.6
3. The soul (De anima). It exists in MS. in several English libraries, but has never been printed. It is directed against the view of Macarius (or Marianus) Scotus, derived from a misin terpreted sentence of Augustin that the whole human race had only one soul. The opinion was condemned by the Lateran council under Leo X. (1512-17).
4. Divine predestination.7 It was written about 849 at the request of Charles the Bald, who sought Ratramnus7 opinion in the Gottschalk controversy. Ratramnus defended Gottschalk, al though he does not mention his name, maintaining likewise a two-fold predestination, regardless of the fact that the synods of Mayence (848) and of Quiercy (849) had condemned it, and Gottschalk had been cruelly persecuted by Hincmar of Rheims.
1 " Nam et baptismi sacramentum dirinitus ilium consecutum fuisse, nubis ministerio earn perfandente, sicut libellus ipse testatur, creditur" col. 1155.
2 De eo quod Christ us ex virgine natus est liber, ibid. col. 81 [not 31, as in table of contents]-102. 3 Chap. I. col. 83. 4 Chap. II. col. 84. 5 Chap. VIII. col. 96.
6 See Steitz in Herzog* (art. Radbertus} XII. 482-483.
7 De prcedestinatione Dei libri duo, Migne, CXXI. col. 11-80.
748 FOURTH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
In the first book Ratramnus maintains the predestination of the good to salvation by an appeal to the patristic Scriptural quota tions and interpretations upon this point, particularly those of Augustin. In the second book he follows the same method to prove that God has predestinated the bad to eternal damnation. But this is not a predestination to sin. Rather God foresees their determinination to sin and therefore withholds his help, so that they are lost in consequence of their own sins.
5. Four books upon the Greeks' indictment of the Roman Church.1 Like the former work, it was written by request. In 967 Photius addressed a circular letter to the Eastern bishops in which he charged the Roman Church with certain errors in faith and practice : e. g., the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, the celibacy of the clergy, the Sabbath and Lent fasts. Nicholas I. called upon his bishops to refute this charge. Hincmar of Rheims commissioned Odo of Beauvais to write an apolo getic treatise, but his work not proving satisfactory he next asked Ratramnus. The work thus produced is very famous. The first three books are taken up with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit ; but in the fourth he branches out upon a general defense of the ecclesiastical practices of the Latin Church. He does this in an admirable, liberal and Christian spirit. In the first chapter of the fourth book he mildly rebukes the Greeks for prescribing their peculiar customs to others, because the difference in such things is no hindrance to the unity of the faith which Paul enjoins in 1 Cor. i. 10. This unity he finds in the faith in the Trinity, the birth of Christ from a Virgin, his sufferings, resurrection, ascension, session at God's right hand, return to judgment, and in the baptism into Father, Son and Holy Spirit.2 In the first three chapters of the book he proves this proposition by a review of the condition of the Early Church. He then passes on to defend the Roman customs.8
1 Contra Grcecorum opposita Romanam eccksiam infamantium Hbri quatuor, ibid. col. 225-346. 2 IV. 1. Ibid. col. 303.
8 It is instructive to compare the apology of ./Eneas, bishop of Paris (re-