The Life of John Duns
(What follows here is the section on Scotus's life from The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus, corrected and amplified as more information comes to light.)
We know very little with certainty about the details of Scotus's life and the chronology of his writings, and the evidence and arguments used to establish what we do know are sometimes forbiddingly complex. I make no attempt here to lay out all the speculations or even to adjudicate all the controversies. What follows is therefore a partial and inevitably controversial account of Scotus's life and works. It would, I believe, command wide acceptance among students of Scotus; I indicate some points of dispute in the text and offer extensive references for those who wish to explore these matters in more detail. (1)
I. Scotus's LifeAs a guide through the complexities of the narrative that follows, I offer first a chronology in tabular form. 'AY' stands for 'academic year, a period extending from early October to late June.
The first definite date we have for Scotus's life is that of his ordination to the priesthood in the Order of Friars Minor -- the Franciscans -- at Saint Andrew's Priory in Northampton, England, on 17 March 1291. The minimum age for ordination was twenty-five, so we can conclude that Scotus was born before 17 March 1266. But how much before? The conjecture, plausible but by no means certain, is that Scotus would have been ordained as early as canonically permitted. Since the Bishop of Lincoln (the diocese that included Oxford, where Scotus was studying, as well as St Andrew's Priory) had ordained priests in Wycombe on 23 December 1290, we can place Scotus's birth between 23 December 1265 and 17 March 1266.
It seems likely that Scotus began his studies with the Franciscans at Oxford at a very young age. The history written by John Mair (or John Major) in 1521 says that "When [Scotus] was no more than a boy, but had been already grounded in grammar, he was taken by two Scottish Minorite [i.e., Franciscan] friars to Oxford, for at that time there existed no university in Scotland. By the favour of those friars he lived in the convent of the Minorites at Oxford." (2) A. G. Little (3) reports that it was typical for boys to begin their studies at Oxford when they were as young as ten or twelve years old. And Scotus himself, in a remark that many have quite naturally taken as a reflection on his own early training, notes that "these days boys are taught and trained forthwith in matters pertaining to the clergy or the divine office, so nowadays a boy of thirteen years is more adequately instructed in such matters than a twenty-five-year-old peasant might have been in the primitive church." (4)
Direct evidence about Scotus's theological education at Oxford is hard to come by. One commonly accepted chronology assumes that he followed the typical course of training for university students. (5) That course would require that after completing his preliminary studies in the faculty of arts Scotus would spend six academic years studying theology. In his seventh and eighth years he would have learned to serve as opponent, and in his ninth year as respondent, in disputations. In his tenth year he would have prepared his lectures on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, to be delivered in the following year. In his twelfth year he would have been required to lecture on the Bible, and in his final year to dispute under various masters. Now we know that Scotus participated in a disputation under Philip Bridlington during Bridlington's year of regency, which was the academic year 1300-01. (6) This fact would suggest that Scotus's final year of training at Oxford was 1300-01. If so, we could conclude that Scotus began his theological study in 1288, served as opponent in 1294-96 and as respondent in 1296-97, prepared his lectures on the Sentences in 1297-98, delivered them in 1298-99, and lectured on the Bible in 1299-1300. After his studies were completed in 1301, a further year would be required before Scotus was qualified to read the Sentences at Paris; Brampton therefore concludes that "He must have taught in an unknown convent in England as a lector." (7)
Unfortunately, the assumption on which this chronology rests -- that Scotus would have followed the typical university course leading to the mastership in theology -- is very likely false. The university regulations establishing that course applied to secular masters, not to members of the mendicant orders, who were granted a number of dispensations from the sequence prescribed for secular degree candidates. (8) Indeed, the Franciscan educational system allowed enough flexibility at various levels of study that it is impossible to reconstruct a year-by-year chronology of Scotus=s studies, or even to determine exactly when they began.
We do, however, have some good evidence relating to the final stages of his academic career at Oxford. We know, for example, that Scotus was in Oxford in July 1300, when the English provincial, Hugh of Hertilpole, asked Bishop Dalderby to license one "Johannes Douns," along with 21 others, to hear confessions at the Franciscan church at Oxford. (9) As Wolter notes, (10) it seems highly improbable that Hugh would have presented Scotus for faculties to hear confessions in the Oxford church if he had assigned Scotus to go to Paris for the fall term, which would have started only about ten weeks later. So it is reasonable to conclude that Scotus remained in Oxford through 1300-01.
Further evidence is found in a statement Scotus makes in the prologue to his Ordinatio. Having argued that the long endurance of the Church testifies to its divine authority, he considers the objection that Islam has also endured for many centuries:
If an objection is raised concerning the permanence of the sect of Mohammed, I reply: that sect began more than six hundred years after the law of Christ, and, God willing, it will shortly be brought to an end, since it has been greatly weakened in the year of Christ 1300, and many of its believers are dead and still more have fled, and a prophecy current among them states that their sect is to be brought to an end. (11)
What Scotus has in mind here is the defeat of the Sultan of Egypt by Turks allied with the Christians of Armenia and Georgia on 23 December 1299. News of that defeat probably reached Oxford in June of 1300, but the excitement it generated proved to be short-lived. Now this passage occurs in the second part of the Prologue to the Ordinatio, the revised version of his Oxford lectures, but it has no predecessor in the Lectura, which gives the actual text of the lectures he had delivered some time earlier. The obvious conclusion to draw is that Scotus was just beginning to revise his Oxford lectures in the summer or early fall of 1300, and that the lectures themselves had been given some time earlier. (12)
Scotus began lecturing on the Sentences at the University of Paris in October 1302. In the spring of 1303 he probably participated in the disputation between the Franciscan Regent Master, Gonsalvus of Spain, and the Dominican Meister Eckhart. Around that time the campaign of King Philip IV ("the Fair") of France to call a general council to depose Pope Boniface VIII moved into high gear. Beginning in March Philip secured the support, first of the French nobility, then of nearly all the higher clergy, and finally of the University of Paris and the chapter of Notre Dame. As Little continues the story, "On 24 June a great anti-papal demonstration was organized in the gardens of the Louvre; the mendicant friars attended in procession, and the meeting was addressed by Bertold of St. Denys, bishop of Orleans and ex-chancellor of the university, and by two Friars Preachers and two Friars Minor." (13) The next day royal commissioners visited the Franciscan convent and asked each friar individually whether he consented to the king's proposals. Eighty-four Franciscans, nearly all French, were listed as agreeing to the king's appeal; eighty-seven, mostly foreigners, dissented. Among the dissenters were Scotus and Gonsalvus. The king ordered the dissident friars to leave France within three days.
We are not absolutely certain where Scotus went during his exile from France. Some have suggested Cambridge, since it appears that Scotus lectured at Cambridge at some point. (14) But most scholars find it more probable to suppose that he returned to Oxford, and the Vatican editors believe that the so-called Lectura completa, a set of lectures given at Oxford on Book 3 of the Sentences, dates from Scotus's exile. (15) In any event, the exile was not long. Boniface VIII died on October 11, and the new pope, Benedict XI, made peace with Philip. In April 1304 Philip permitted Scotus and the rest of the friars to return to Paris. Scotus probably resumed his lectures with Book 4 of the Sentences.
Some time early in the academic year 1304-05 Scotus acted as respondent in the formal disputation that was part of the inception of Gilles de Ligny. ('Inception' is the name for the academic exercises by which a bachelor theologian received the doctorate and was promoted to master.) Shortly thereafter, on 18 November, the Franciscan Minister-General, Gonsalvus of Spain, sent a letter to the Minister-Provincial of France asking that Scotus be put next in line for such promotion: "I assign to you John the Scot, of whose praiseworthy life, outstanding knowledge, and most subtle intelligence I have been made fully aware, partly through long experience and partly through his reputation, which has spread everywhere." (16) Scotus incepted as master early in 1305. It was around this time that Scotus disputed with the Dominican William Peter Godinus on the principle of individuation. (17) In either Advent 1306 or Lent 1307 he conducted a quodlibetal disputation.
According to tradition, Scotus's time in Paris came to a sudden and unexpected end when the Minister-General transferred him to the Franciscan studium at Cologne. Whether this story of a hasty removal is true or not, it is certainly the case that Scotus's successor at Paris is known to have been master at least as early as 25 October 1307, and Scotus is listed as "lector of Cologne" in a document dated 20 February 1308, (18) so it is likely that Scotus began teaching in Cologne in October 1307 and continued through the rest of the academic year. In default of hard evidence, various speculations, ranging from the fantastic to the mundane, have been proposed to explain why Scotus was transferred out of the far more prestigious University of Paris at the height of his career. One of the more ingenious explanations was that of Callebaut, (19) who argued that Scotus was in danger because of his opposition to the French king's vigorous measures to suppress the Knights Templar, measures enthusiastically supported by John of Pouilly, who had accused Scotus of heresy for his defense of the Immaculate Conception and expressed the wish to attack Scotus "not by arguments but in some other way" (non argumentis sed aliter). So, according to Callebaut, Gonsalvus sent Scotus to Cologne to be out of the way of danger. A more matter-of-fact explanation was suggested by Longpré, who noted that it was common for the Franciscans to send their star theologians from one house to another. (20) But whatever his reason for being in Cologne, he was not to be there long. He died at Cologne in 1308; the date is traditionally given as November 8. He was buried in the Franciscan church in Cologne, where today his remains rest in an ornate sarcophagus bearing the Latin epitaph that has been associated with his burial-place for centuries:
| Scotia me genuit, Anglia me suscepit, Gallia me docuit, Colonia me tenet. |
Scotland bore me, England received me, France taught me, Cologne holds me. |
|
NOTES
1. The account that follows relies on Wolter 1993, 1995, 1996; S. Dumont 1996, 2001; Noone 1995; and the introductions to the critical editions of Scotus's works (see the chart of editions, below). I am grateful to Timothy B. Noone for his helpful remarks on an earlier draft of this essay.
2. Major 1892, 206; quoted in Wolter 1993, 6.
3. Little 1892, 191.
4. Ord. 4, d. 25, q. 2, n. 2
5. The classic statement of this chronology is in Brampton 1964. It has been defended by Allan B. Wolter, most notably in Wolter 1995, and widely accepted by other writers.
6. Brampton 1964, 17-18.
7. Brampton 1964, 17.
8. Roest 2000, 100. Roest's study offers an excellent overview of the development of the Franciscan educational system.
9. Hugh met in person with Bishop Dalderby at Dorchester-on-Thames on 26 July 1300. The Bishop thought the request for 22 licenses was wildly excessive for a single church and selected only 8 of the friars. Scotus was not among them.
10. Wolter 1995, 187-188.
11. Ord. prol., pars 2, q. un., n. 112
12. The Vatican editors, however, date the lectures to 1300-01. See Vatican 19:33*, and cf. Brampton 1964, 8-9, and Wolter 1996, 45-47.
13. Little 1932, 575.
14. Scotus refers to his Cambridge lecture at Ord. 1, d. 4, n. 1. See Reportatio 1C, below. It is also possible that Scotus lectured at Cambridge some time before going to Paris in 1302.
15. Vatican 19:33*.
16. Little 1892, 220. Note that the adjective 'subtle had come to be associated with Scotus even during his lifetime, although I know of no appearance of the epithet "Subtle Doctor" until a few years after his death.
17. See Noone 1995, 394-395. An edition of this disputation is printed in Stroick 1974, 581-608.
18. Little 1932, 582; Wolter 1993, 12.
19. Callebaut 1928.
20. Wolter 1993, 13.