FOUR QUESTIONS ON MARY - Franciscan Institute Publications

John Duns Scotus: Four Questions on Mary
in the decades that followed. 49 In the Ordinatio it is the only
alternative to his own preferred position, and since this version
is really Scotus’s own rather than Henry’s he does not
even mention the “Ghentian” as he did in the earlier Lectura
Completa. 50 Nevertheless, it is clear from all his accounts
that Scotus himself chose to believe Mary never contracted
sin to begin with, since he sees this as a distinct possibility
and according to his Marian principle “If the authority of
the Church or the authority of Scripture does not contradict
such, it seems probable what is more excellent should be attributed
to Mary.” And it is on this basis that he interprets
the Feast of the Conception. 51
49 This second possibility would become the preferred interpretation of
those who wished to hold the common opinion, and did not feel comfortable
with Scotus’s first possibility. Thus, the Dominican Durandus of Saint-
Pourçain, writing a decade or more later, says: Hic est duplex modus dicendi.
Primus est quod B.V. non fuit concepta in originali peccato, sed simul
tempore fuit animata et grata ipsi data. Et huius dicti ostenditur primo
possibilitas ... secundo congruitas ... et tertio probatur quod ita factum fuerit
... Alius modus dicendi est quod ... non decuit ut praeservata fuerit. He
also agrees this view does not rule out the fact that Christ was also Mary’s
redeemer, but he then goes on to give his own opinion. His non obstantibus,
[alia] opinio videtur verior, scilicet quod Deus potuit facere quod B. V. per
solum instans esset in culpa originali et toto tempore sequenti in gratia...
Sent. III, d. 3, q. 2 (Antverpiae, 1566), f. 218rb; q. 2, f. 218va.
50 Scotus, Lectura completa (92). Referring to this second possibility he
writes: Sed secundum etiam fuit possibile, scilicet quod tantum per unum
instans fuit in peccato originali et in tempore habito in gratia. Et si sic intelligit
Gandavus, tunc est opinio bona, ita quod pro instanti conceptionis
fuerit in culpa et filia irae, et in tot tempore habito sub gratia, quia hoc
patet in creaturis frequenter. According to the Krakow MS (Bibl. univer.
Iagell., lat. 1408) a detailed account of what Henry really taught is appended
as a note at the end of the Lectura, as though it were something
discovered later. (Ibid., 98-100).
51 In the Lectura Scotus answers the Canonical objection to the celebration
of the Feast explaning that the glossarist knew nothing more
than what others had said about the feast and one should answer it as
he had answered the objection from Bernard and the other saints. “Hence
one must say that the seminal conception must not be celebrated but the
conception of the animated body can be celebrated” (96). At Paris, according
to the Barcelona MS he put it this way: “As to that decree ‘about the
celebration of conception of the Virgin’ it can be said that Gratian had in
mind that it was not to be celebrated so far as her procreation was natural;
but inasmuch as as she was deprived of original [sin] it can be celebrated.”
(65) In the Ordinatio Scotus does not mention the Feast explicitly but
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