DUNS SCO'TUS, one of the most famous and influential of the scholastics of the 14th century. His history is involved in considerable obscurity. England, Scotland, and Ireland all contend for the honor of having given him birth, but without anything to offer in support of their respective claims beyond inference from his name. As to the date of his birth, all that can be said is, that it was in the last half of the 13th century. Whatever was the history of his youth, he entered early the order of Franciscans, studied at Oxford, and soon became professor of theology. His prelections were attended by crowds of auditors. the number of students at Oxford then exceeding 30,000. About 1304, he removed to Paris,: then the chief seat of scholastic philosopliy, where he taught theology with great applause. He was especially distinguished for the zeal and ability with which he defended the immaculate conception of the Virgin against Thomas Aquinas. He is said to have demolished 200 objections to the doctrine, and established it by a cloud of proofs. It continued long a point of dispute between the Scotists and Thomists; and it was only in 1854 that the dogma was by papal authority declared a necessary doctrine of the Catholic faith, which it is now heresy to deny. In 1308, D. S. was called to Cologne to oppose the heresies of the Beguin brethren, and there he suddenly died, in the 34th or 43d year of his life. D. S. was mostly opposed to Thomas Aquinas in theological opinions, and held very tenaciously the doctrine of the absolute freedom of the human will, from whose spontaneous exercise he derives all morality.
He was a realist in philosophy, and his followers are on that ground opposed to the Occultists, who were nominalists. See the article NOMINALISM. He defended his opinions in the style of dialectic then in vogue, and with an acuteness that got him from his contemporaries the name of Doctor Subtilis. When, however, at the revival of learn ing, the followers of Duns, or Dunsmen, saw that the hair-splitting style of reasoning was going out of fashion, they "raged," as old Tyndal says, "in every pulpit" against the new classic studies, so that the name gradually came to signify not only one opposed to learning, but one slow at learning; hence our word dunce, a blockhead. It would be difficult to indicate the nature of his speculative opinions without entering into particu lars, nor are his writings as yet sufficiently known and explored for the formation of a. decided judgment. The most famous of his works, besides his commentaries on the Bible and on Aristotle, is his Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, called the Opus Oxoniense, of which the Opus Parisiense is an abridgment. The chief edition of his works is that of Luke Wadding (12 vols., Lyons, 1639), but it is by no means complete. The controversies carried on so long between the Scotists and Thomists owed their bitterness not so much to zeal for science and religion, as to existing between the Franciscans and Dominicans.