The Introduction ("Isagoge") to the Categories of Aristotle,
Written by the Greek scholar and neoplatonist Porphyry in the third
century A.D., was translated into Latin by Boetius, and in this
form was extensively used throughout the Middle Ages as a
compendium of Aristotelian logic. As a philosopher Porphyry was
chiefly important as the immediate successor of Plotinus in the
neoplatonic school at Rome, but his "Isagoge" had extraordinary
weight among the medieval logicians.


PRISCIAN

The _Institutiones grammaticae_ of Priscian (Priscianus
Caesariensis) formed the standard grammatical and philological
textbook of the Middle Ages, its importance being fairly indicated
by the fact that today there exist about a thousand manuscript
copies of it.


ANSELM

Anselm of Laon was born somewhere about 1040, and is said to have
studied under the famous St. Anselm, later archbishop of
Canterbury, at the monastery of Bec. About 1070 he began to teach
in Paris, where he was notably successful. Subsequently he returned
to Laon, where his school of theology and exegetics became the most
famous one in Europe. His most important work, an interlinear gloss
on the Scriptures, was regarded as authoritative throughout the
later Middle Ages. He died in 1117. That he was something of a