Antonie Vos, John Duns Scotus. A Life. Studies in the History of Church and Theology, 2. Kampen: Summum, 2018, 243 pp.

Abstract

“There exists little direct documentation regarding Duns’ life. […] The secret is to combine many new aspects with the significant body of biographical literature hidden in many books and contributions published in many countries in quite different languages over many decades” (p. 53). Few scholars would seem ready to reveal this secret in the sense of a state-of-the-art biography of John Duns Scotus (ca. 1266–1308), one of the foremost thinkers in philosophy and theology during the high or early late Middle Ages. Among those few, Antonie Vos (*1944) appears particularly well-prepared with his research on Duns spanning several decades, including seminal studies such as his 2006 monograph The Philosophy of John Duns Scotus. In the introduction to the present book, Vos openly reflects upon shortcomings of his own earlier research, thus justifying yet another attempt at coping with Duns and his work, or “the Scotist riddle” (p. 9), as Vos calls it. Despite his confident claim of being able “to extend, to enrich and to correct my story” (p. 7), the author is humble enough to start his journey into Duns’s life by stating: “The best professors at the university and the best handbooks do not speak with one voice. In the humanities, there are groups and movements, and even ideologies. There is confusion and there are many mistakes, but we do not give in” (p. 9).