Duns Scotus

John Duns Scotus, a Scottish Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, lived from around late 1265 or early 1266 until 8 November 1308. He worked as a university professor, philosopher, and theologian, and is ranked alongside Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and William of Ockham as one of the most significant philosopher-theologians in Western Christendom during the later medieval period. His ideas have shaped both Catholic and secular thought.

He is best known for the univocity of being, meaning existence is the most abstract concept and applies to everything that exists; the formal distinction, which separates different aspects of the same thing; and haecceity, the property that makes each individual thing unique, a kind of "thisness." He also crafted a detailed argument for God’s existence and supported the Immaculate Conception of Mary. The tradition based on his work is called Scotism. He earned the title "the subtle Doctor" for his sharp and nuanced thinking, and Pope John Paul II beatified him in 1993.

Life

Little is known about Scotus’s life beyond his writings. He was likely born between 23 December 1265 and 17 March 1266 into a prominent local family. A cairn near the North Lodge of Duns Castle in Scotland, erected in 1966 by Franciscan friars from the United Kingdom for the 700th anniversary of his birth, marks the reputed site. He received the Franciscan habit in Dumfries, where his uncle, Elias Duns, served as guardian.

The first certain date in his life is his ordination as a priest on 17 March 1291 at St Andrew’s, Northampton, England. Since the minimum age for holy orders was 25, it is assumed he was ordained as soon as allowed. His contemporaries called him Johannes Duns, following the practice of using a Christian name followed by a place of origin, suggesting he came from Duns in Berwickshire, Scotland.

Tradition holds that Scotus studied at a Franciscan studium in Oxford, located behind St Ebbe’s Church, in an area near Pennyfarthing Street, St Aldate’s, the castle, and the old wall. The Friars Minor moved there when the University of Paris was dispersed in 1229–30. Around 270 people lived there at the time, about 80 of them friars.

Scotus appears to have been in Oxford by 1300, listed among friars for whom the provincial superior of the English ecclesiastical province, which included Scotland, requested faculties from the Bishop of Lincoln for hearing confessions. He participated in a disputation under regent master Philip of Bridlington in 1300–01. He began lecturing on Peter Lombard’s Sentences at the University of Paris near the end of 1302, but was expelled later that academic year for siding with Pope Boniface VIII in his conflict with King Philip IV of France over taxing church property.

He returned to Paris before the end of 1304, likely in May, and continued lecturing until he was sent to the Franciscan studium in Cologne, probably in October 1307, for reasons that remain unclear. According to 15th-century writer William Vorilong, his departure was sudden and unexpected. While relaxing or talking with students in an open area used by scholars for recreation, orders arrived from the Franciscan Minister General, and Scotus left immediately, taking few or no personal belongings. He died unexpectedly in Cologne in November 1308, traditionally on 8 November, and is buried in the Church of the Friars Minor there.

His sarcophagus bears a Latin poem. A story that he was buried alive, because his servant was absent and knew of his susceptibility to coma, is probably a myth; the first known mention of this tale dates from around 1400, and Francis Bacon later reported it. A colophon in Codex 66 of Merton College, Oxford, indicates Scotus also studied at Cambridge.

Work

Scotus’s major work is his commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, which contains nearly all his well-known philosophical views and arguments, including the univocity of being, the formal distinction, less than numerical unity, individual nature or haecceity, his critique of illuminationism, and his argument for God’s existence. This commentary exists in several versions. The standard version is the Ordinatio, also called the Opus oxoniense, a revised version of lectures he gave as a bachelor at Oxford. The initial revision likely began in the summer of 1300, as remarks in the Prologue, question 2, allude to the Battle of Wadi al-Khazandar in 1299, news of which probably reached Oxford that summer.

It remained unfinished when he left for Paris in 1302. The two other versions are his notes for the Oxford lectures, recently transcribed and published as the Lectura, the first book of which was probably written in Oxford in the late 1290s, and the Reportatio parisiensis, or Opus parisiense, consisting of transcriptions of his Paris lectures on the Sentences. A reportatio is a student report or transcription of a master’s original lecture; a version checked by the master is called a ordinatio.