140. Principal Realists. Fredegis. Remi of Auxerre. -- The Athenian sage (Atheniensis Sophista), whom we meet at the court of Charlemagne, "realizes" death, because death is to receive the price of life. FREDEGIS, the predecessor of John Scotus Eriugena at the palace school, also illustrates this unconscious artlessness in speculation, which is revealed in varying degrees by the realists of this first group. From the statement of Scripture, that Egypt was covered with a darkness so thick that it could be felt by the hand, he proceeds, in his work De Nihilo et Tenebris to "realize," to make real, the entia rationis or purely logical entities, darkness, and even nothingness itself. He develops this same teaching in a Letter to Agobard.

At the end of the ninth century, realism was propounded by REMI OF AUXERRE, who succeeded his master, Eric, in the chair of the abbey, abandoning Eric's teaching (144). Later on, Remi taught at Rheims, and he is set down as the first doctor to introduce dialectic into the Paris schools. He has left us a commentary on the Ars Minor of Donatus, a work widely studied down to the twelfth century, and also a commentary on Martianus Capella, in which Remi draws extensively from a similar work of John Scotus Eriugena.