Gottschalk was a child oblate and unwilling monk, first of Fulda, then Reichenau, then Orbais and then - as a prisoner - at Hautvilliers. The reason for his imprisonment was the condemnation, at the Council of Quierzy in 849 for teaching the doctrine of double predestination: that the good are predestined to eternal bliss and the wicked to eternal damnation (edition - Gottschalk of Orbais 1945; cf. Jolivet 1958). Gottschalk claimed, with a great deal of justice, that this was Augustine’s position. His opponents, who included his former teacher Hrabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mainz, and Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, accepted as orthodox the doctrine that God predestines the good to salvation, but rejected the idea of predestination to damnation. In their view, it made God responsible for the evils performed by the wicked and so an unjust judge in punishing them; moreover, they regarded the teaching as socially destructive, since it removed the incentive for Christians to behave well. Although the subject matter ofthis dispute was, then, strictly theological, and much energy on both sides was spent in finding patristic texts that supported one or the other view, it was also the occasion for medieval authors to begin to tackle the complex of philosophical problems surrounding the idea of free will (cf. Schrimpf 1980; Marenbon 1990).
The outstanding philosophical contribution to the controversy was John Scottus Eriugena’s De praedestinatione, written in the early 850s at Hincmar’s request and discussed in the entry on Eriugena. But Hincmar’s own Ad reclusos et semplices (Gundlach 1889) and Hrabanus Maurus’ letter to Noting (Patrologia Latina 112, 1530-53) setting out his position both show their authors struggling with some central ideas. Their difficulty results from the fact that, like Gottschalk, they accept that humans cannot act well without God’s grace and that only some are predetermined to receive this grace. But then if God omits to give a certain person grace, and so that person cannot but be damned, is this not exactly the same as double predestination? Hrabanus and Hincmar are at least aware of this problem. Hrabanus tries to tackle it by suggesting that it may be the individual person who chooses to desert God, while Hincmar puts forward the suggestion (along lines which would be elaborated into a theory of Middle Knowledge by Molina in the sixteenth century) that God withholds grace from those who he has foreseen would misuse it if they received it. Further interesting contributions to the debate were made in the 850’s in opposition to John Scottus’ contribution by Florus of Lyons (Patrologia Latina 119, 101-250) and Prudentius of Troyes (Patrologia Latina 115, 1009-1366).
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