Blessed John Duns Scotus, Franciscan, Theologian of the Immaculate Conception
November 8th, is the optional memorial of Blessed John Duns Scotus, (c. 1266 – 1308) a 13th century, Franciscan priest and theologian, who, alongside Saint Bonaventure, is the most influential theologian in the history of the Franciscan Order. He was probably born in the winter of c. 1266 in the South of Scotland. Around the year 1279, he was accepted to a Franciscan friary. After eight years of preliminary studies in philosophy at Oxford, he began to study theology there in 1288. He was ordained to the priesthood in Northampton on March 17, 1291. In the academic year 1298, he prepared his first theological lectures which would alter his life. The following semester, he presented the course on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, the most prominent text of systematic theology at the time. During these years he wrote Lectura I-II, his lecture notes on the two first books of the Sentences . Duns Scotus' scholarship impressed his fellow academics and the Franciscan leadership, as an e