‘‘Scotus’’ is a nickname: it identifies Scotus as a Scot. His family name was Duns, which was also the name of the Scottish village in which he was born, just a few miles from the English border. We do not know the precise date of his birth, but it is a reasonable conjecture that he was born between December 23, 1265 and March 17, 1266.
It appears that Scotus began his formal studies at Oxford in October 1288 and concluded them in June 1301. In the academic year 1298-1299, he commented on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. We know that by the fall of 1302 Scotus was lecturing on the Sentences in Paris. In June 1303, Scotus was expelled from France along with 80 other friars for taking the Pope’s side in a dispute with the king. They were allowed to return in April 1304; it appears that Scotus completed his lectures on the Sentences not long thereafter. On November 18, 1304 Scotus was appointed the Franciscan regent master in theology at Paris. For reasons no one quite understands, Scotus was transferred to the Franciscan studium at Cologne, probably beginning his duties as lector in October 1307. He died there in 1308; the date of his death is traditionally given as November 8.
It is generally agreed that Scotus’ earliest works were his ‘‘parva logicalia’’ (little logical works): questions on Porphyry’s Isagoge and Aristotle’s Categories, Peri hermeneias, and De sophisticis elenchis. These probably date to around 1295; the Quaestiones super De anima is also very likely an early work. Scotus’ other Aristotelian commentary, the Quaestiones subtilissimae super metaphysicam Aristotelis, seems to have been started early; but Book 9 is probably late, and it is possible that Books 6 through 9 are all late or were at least revised later in Scotus’ career. Scotus also wrote an Expositio on Aristotle’s Metaphysics. It had been lost for centuries but was recently rediscovered and edited by Giorgio Pini.
Things really get complicated when we come to Scotus’ commentaries on the Four Books of Sentences of Peter Lombard, since it appears that he commented on the Sentences on several occasions, and the relations among the various versions are not always clear. Of these, the
Ordinatio (i. e., a version prepared for publication by the author himself) of lectures at Oxford, based in part on earlier lecture notes and on material from his lectures in Paris, is generally taken to be Scotus’ premier work; the critical edition of the Ordinatio is incomplete but at this time extends through Book 4, distinction 13. Scotus seems to have been revising the Ordinatio up to his death. Scotus also lectured on the Sentences several times at Paris, and there are various Reportationes (student reports) of these lectures, all dating from the period 1302-1307. The most important is the Reportatio examinata of Book 1; the designation examinata indicates that it was examined and corrected by Scotus himself. The Reportatio examinata is in the process of being critically edited.
In addition to these works, we have 46 short disputations called Collationes dating from 1300-1305, a late work in natural theology called De primo principio, and Quaestiones quodlibetales from Scotus’ days as regent master (either Advent 1306 or Lent 1307). Finally, there is a work called Theoremata. Though doubts have been raised about its authenticity, the recent critical edition accepts it as a genuine work of Scotus.
World History
