Bl John Duns Scotus  November 8

During the first decade of the 14th century, the most famous teacher at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, and Paris was Fr John Duns of Scotland. Not only did he possess one of the keenest and most penetrating minds the world has ever seen, but he was a humble Friar Minor, a close follower of St. Francis of Assisi.

Born in 1266 of an Irish family at Littledean, Scotland, he received his early education from his Franciscan uncle, Fr Elias Duns, in the friary at Dumfries. He was clothed with the Franciscan habit about 1280; and even before his ordination he taught theology to his brethren.

Bishop Oliver Sutton of Lincoln, England, ordained him a priest on St. Patrick's Day, 1291. After he had studied at Paris and Oxford for 8 years, he began to lecture at Cambridge in 1301 and the following year taught at the Sorbonne, Paris. At that time Phillip the Fair was engaged in a disgraceful quarrel with Pope Boniface VIII, and Fr John fearlessly defended the spiritual supremacy of the Vicar of Christ. Thus he incurred the anger of the French king, and together with his thirty confreres of the Paris friary he was forced to flee the country.

Returning to England, Fr John taught at Oxford (1303-06), and there obtained the doctor's degree in 1304. Soon the fame of his genius and learning spread abroad, and students came to sit at the feet of the new teacher. "From almost every corner of the globe," wrote Rodulphus, "large numbers came to see and hear him whom they reverenced as an oracle from heaven."

The title of the Subtle Doctor was conferred on Fr John; for, as Rodulphus wrote, "there was nothing so recondite, nothing so abstruse that his keen mind could not fathom and clarify; nothing so knotty that he, like another Oedipus, could not unravel; nothing so fraught with difficulty or enveloped in darkness that his genius could not expound." Another writer declared: "He described the Divine Nature as if he had seen God; the attributes of the celestial spirits as if he had been an angel; the felicities of a future state as if he had enjoyed them; and the ways of Providence as if he had penetrated into all Its secrets."

In 1306 Father John returned to Paris; and there came to be known as the Doctor of Mary, after he had championed her Immaculate Conception and refuted all the objections of the learned men of the time against this prerogative of Our Lady. Like a true son of St. Francis, Blessed John Duns Scotus was eager to honor the Mother of God, whom St. Francis made the mother and patroness of his order. Scotus defended this exceptional privilege, which from the first moment of her conception kept Mary free from original sin. Because of this privilege the serpent, whose head she was destined to crush, never had any power over Mary. It was a consolation to the faithful, and to the Franciscan Order in particular, when this truth was declared a dogma on December 8, 1854.

The Supreme Pontiff, Pope Pius IX, extended a great kindness to the Franciscan Order on that occasion. In all Franciscan churches the faithful can gain a plenary indulgence on this feast, and all Franciscan priests have the privilege of saying the Mass of the Immaculate Conception every Saturday throughout the year except on certain specified days.  

The seal of the Church's approval was also placed on Fr John's Christocentric doctrine, when the feast of Christ the King was instituted in 1925. "Duns Scotus," writes Fr Gemelli, "conceived the universe in the form of a gigantic pyramid, built up of every kind of genera and species, rising upward by degrees, the lower stages united in their most noble part to the higher. . . 'Jesus Christ is the culminating logical point of creation.'" Thus, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity would have assumed a human nature even if Adam had not sinned. Because Adam sinned Christ came as Redeemer of the human race, but He is at the same time King of creation.

In 1307 Fr John was sent to Cologne, and there he died and was buried in the Minoritenkirche (Friars' Church). The date usually given as that of his death is November 8, 1308; but docuмents recently discovered seem to indicate that he lived for some time longer. Fr John was honored as a saint, and his tomb has been visited through the centuries by large numbers of the faithful. During World War II, the Friars' Church, which was formerly in the care of the Conventuals, was demolished; and while it was being rebuilt, the relics of Blessed John Duns Scotus were kept in a secret place in the famous cathedral, except for an arm which is now kept in an ancient sarcophagus in the crypt of the Franciscans' new church in another part of the city.

You really should learn how to look things like this up for yourself:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05194a.htm

It takes less time to search google and find the link to the Catholic Encyclopedia online than to create a CathInfo post.