Saint Who?
Saints Who Promoted Marian Devotion
Blessed John Duns Scotus
Priest and religious († 1308) Feast: November 8
John Duns was born around 1266 and ordained a Franciscan priest in 1291. He became a prominent Scholastic philosopher and theologian, studying and teaching at Oxford and the University of Paris and earning the nickname “the subtle doctor.”
He is credited with helping to turn the theological tide at the University of Paris regarding the Immaculate Conception. Prior to the formal definition by Blessed Pius IX in 1854, the exact nature of Mary’s sinlessness had become a matter of much debate: was she delivered from original sin at the moment of her conception, or sometime between conception and birth? While popular devotion was strongly in favor of the former, even some great theologians who are now saints demurred. The question was how to reconcile the universal nature of sin, and the necessity of redemption through Christ, with Virgin’s fullness of grace.
It is said that as Scotus was on his way to a debate on the subject, he knelt to pray at a Marian shrine. “Allow me to praise you, O Sacred Virgin,” he begged, in the words of an antiphon once prayed in the divine office. Once arrived, he successfully argued that Mary, though an heir to the sin of Adam, had received a more perfect redemption by her preservation from this legacy from the very moment of conception and had thus glorified Christ to a higher degree. Scotus died while teaching in Cologne. He was beatified in 1993.
O Sacred Virgin Mary, may every teacher find truth and strength in praising your Immaculate Conception.
