REMIGIO di AUXERRE. — Benedictine, exegete, theologian, grammarian, born shortly after 841, died in Paris before 908.
A monk in the abbey of S. Germano di Auxerre (861–62), he was a disciple of Heiric, whom he succeeded around 876 as director of the monastery school. In 893 he was summoned, together with his companion Huchald of St-Amand, by Folco, archbishop of Reims, to restore the two cathedral schools of Reims, the higher and the lower; and after Folco’s death he moved to Paris, where among his pupils was Odone, the future abbot of Cluny.
Learned but not very original, his activity was confined to compilations both in the literary and in the scriptural fields. In the literary field there are commentaries on Donatus’s Ars grammatica minor and minor; on Priscian’s Institutio and De XII versibus Vergilii; on Foca’s Ars grammatica; on Eutyches’ Ars de verbo; on Bede’s De metrica arte; on the Dithica Catonis; on the satires of Giovenale; on the little poems of Sedulius and Prudenzio; on Marziano Capella’s De nuptiis philologiae et Mercurii; on the comedies of Terenzio; and on the life of Persio; in addition, excerpts from Valerius Maximus and an Expositio on Boezio’s De consolatione philosophiae (some of these works are still unpublished; for the edition of the others, cf. Manitius, I, 504–19; II, 808–809 sqq.; III, 1063 sqq.). In the scriptural and liturgical field, the following works are attributed to him: an Expositio super Genesim and Enarrationes in Psalmos (PL 131, 52–844). The commentaries on the minor prophets, on the letters of s. Paolo, on the Cantico dei Cantici, and on the Apocalypse are attributed to Haimo di Halberstadt (PL 171, 9 sqq.). An Expositio de celebratione Missae, on the other hand, belongs among the works of Alcuino (PL 101, 1246); a Tractatus de dedicatione Ecclesiae (PL 131, 845), twelve Homiliae, two Epistolae, and a short treatise De Musica (PL 131, 866) are also attributed to him.
In his school R. also concerned himself with the problem of universals and seems to have attempted a compromise between the extreme realism of Scoto Eriugena and the anti-realism of his teacher Heiric. At Reims, he was the first to introduce dialectic; he also investigated the problem of the origin of the universe, giving a Christian interpretation to the passage of Marziano Capella in which he speaks of the invisible world of ideas. R. is one of those writers of the late Carolingian period who, despite their lack of originality, helped to keep alive the literary culture established through the work of Carlomagno and Alcuino.