FOUR QUESTIONS ON MARY - Franciscan Institute Publications

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Introduction birth from the womb.” 15 This, as Scotus saw it, was really the crucial difficulty he had to address before serious theologians like Bonaventure and Aquinas could accept the Immaculate Conception even as a possibility. And for those who cited the widespread celebration of the feast, even though the Holy See had not sanctioned it and canonists objected to it, Aquinas already had this answer. “Although the Church of Rome does not celebrate the Conception of the Virgin, yet it tolerates the custom of certain churches that do keep that feast; wherefore this is not to be entirely reprobated. Nevertheless the celebration of this feast does not give us to understand that she was holy in her conception. But since it is not known when she was sanctified the feast of her Sanctification rather than the feast of her conception is kept on the day of her conception.” 16 Obviously, then, the immaculist sense was far from being the universal interpretation of the feast, 17 and this more than anything helped to spread its celebration, especially at Paris where the precise object and rationale of the Feast of the Conception on December 8th remained a controversial issue well into the fourteenth century. During Scotus’s student days, it provoked the solemn public debates between the two most prominent secular Masters of Theology at the University of Paris, Henry of Ghent and Godfrey of Fontaines. 18 15 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica III, q. 27, art. 2, ad 2 (New York: Benziger, 1947), vol. II, 2164. 16 Ibid., ad 3, 2165; William of Ware had suggested another acceptable way to celebrate the conception itself, not just Mary’s sanctification. See infra, note 43. 17 Not until 1328 did the provincial council of Canterbury decide to celebrate the feast of the Conception in the sense proposed by Eadmer or pseudo-Anselm. For a history of how the <strong>Franciscan</strong>s interpreted the feast see Ignatius Brady, O.F.M., “The Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception in the Late Fourteenth Century,” Studia Mariana IX (1954), pp. 70-110. 18 Henry of Ghent, Quodlibet XV, q. 13, held during the academic year of 1291/92. If the interest in this question was provoked because the proximity of this disputation to the Feast of the Conception, celebrated on Dec. 8, as seems highly probable, it would indicate Advent of 1291 rather than Easter of 1292 as the date of its composition. Godfrey’s question (Quodlibet VIII) is dated by Wippel 1292/93, but I see no reason why it might not have been in Easter of 1292 when interest in Henry's controversial claim was still high. 7
John Duns Scotus: Four Questions on Mary Both admitted the common opinion that Mary contracted original sin, but as St. Thomas had indicated earlier no one knew the precise moment after animation that her soul was sanctified. Henry of Ghent, however, had proposed a particularly controversial theory claiming that the period her soul was in a state of sin could be reduced to a single moment, a mathematical point in time. The occasion on which he proposed this novel theory was in a solemn public disputation open to any interested non-professional as well as to the faculty and university students of theology from all over Europe. This was not the ordinary disputation the regent Masters took turns in conducting regularly during the academic year, but the specially challenging public disputation held either the second or third week of Advent or shortly before Easter when all classes were suspended to facilitate attendance. Called a “Quodlibet” (the Latin term for “anything”) it was an academic event where anyone could raise any question on any topic of current theological interest and the presiding Master had to answer it. The particular question asked of Master Henry concerned the Feast of the Conception of Mary recently celebrated on December 8th. It was probably a few days later that Henry held his fifteenth Quodlibet during Advent of 1291, and most likely someone from England in his audience raised the hotly controversial subject: “Is the conception of the Virgin Mary to be celebrated by reason of her conception?” 19 The student theologian knew many back home believed Mary had never contracted original sin. They claimed Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of England himself supported this view, because they credited St. Anselm with the authorship of Eadmer’s unsigned tract. But here in Paris, as Bonaventure had noted earlier, no Master ever accepted such a theory. 20 Hence the carefully worded 19 Henry: Utrum conceptio virginis Mariae sit celebranda ratione conceptionis. Quodlibet XV, q. 13 (Parisiis, 1518, photoreprint Louvain, 1961), fol. 584r). 20 After presenting a masterful account of the “pious opinion” the Anglo-Norman students brought to Paris, St. Bonaventure reluctantly rejects it in favor of traditional view. Securior etiam est, quia magis consonat fidei pietati et Sanctorum auctoritati ... communiter Sancti, cum de materia ista loquuntur, solum Christum excipiunt ab illa generalitate, qua dicitur 8
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FOUR QUESTIONS ON MARY - Franciscan Institute Publications

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