REMIGIUS of AUXERRE. – Benedictine, distinguished theologian and grammarian, born shortly after 841, died in Paris before 908.
A monk in the abbey of St Germanus of Auxerre (861–62), he was a pupil of Heiric, whom he succeeded c. 876 as director of the monastery school. In 893 he was summoned, together with his companion Hucbald of St-Amand, by Folc, Archbishop of Reims, to restore the two cathedral schools of Reims, the higher and the lower; and after Folc’s death he went to Paris, where among his pupils was Odo, future abbot of Cluny.
Learned but lacking in originality, his activity was confined to compilations both in the literary and in the scriptural field. In the literary field we have his commentaries on Donatus’s *Ars grammatica minor* and *maior*; on Priscian’s *Institutio* and *De XII versibus Vergilii*; on Phocas’s *Ars grammatica*; on Eutyches’s *Ars de verbo*; on Bede’s *De metrica arte*; on the *Disticha Catonis*; on Juvenal’s satires; on the poems of Sedulius and Prudentius; on Martianus Capella’s *De nuptiis philologiae et Mercurii*; on Terence’s comedies; and on Persius’s life. He also made extracts from Valerius Maximus and wrote an *Expositio* on Boethius’s *De consolatione philosophiae* (some of these works remain unpublished: for the edition of the others, cf. Manitius, I, 504–19; II, 508–509 ff.; III, 1063 ff.). In the scriptural and liturgical field he wrote an *Expositio super Genesim* and *Enarrationes in Psalmos* (PL 131, 52–84). Commentaries on the minor prophets, on the Epistles of St Paul, on the Song of Songs and on the Apocalypse are attributed to Haimo of Halberstadt (PL 171, 9 ff.). Among the works of Alcuin is an *Expositio de celebratione Missae* (PL 101, 1246); to Remigius are also attributed a *Tractatus de dedicatione Ecclesiae* (PL 131, 845), twelve *Homiliae*, two *Epistolae* and a short treatise *De Musica* (PL 131, 866).
In his school R. also dealt with the question of universals and seems to have attempted a compromise between the extreme realism of John Scotus Eriugena and the anti-climacism of his master Heiric. At Reims he was the first to introduce dialectic and investigated the problem of the origin of the universe, giving a Christian interpretation to the passages in Martianus Capella where the latter speaks of the invisible world of ideas. R. is one of those writers of the late Carolingian age who, despite their lack of originality, helped to keep alive the literary culture established through the efforts of Charlemagne and Alcuin.