15th century portrait John Duns Scotus
31 August 2020
A dunce is a person of low intelligence, a poor student. But ironically the word comes from the name of noted scholar, widely respected in his day. The word comes from the name of John Duns Scotus (c. 1266–1308), a Scottish Franciscan friar and theologian. Known as Doctor Subtilis (the subtle teacher), he was one of the leaders of the Scholastic school of philosophy. But how did this reversal of fortune and sense take place?
The Scholastics dominated Western European philosophy during the late medieval period, but by the sixteenth century started to fall from grace. They were criticized, especially by Protestant thinkers, of creating needless assumptions and hair-splitting, making useless distinctions. The Scholastics of the sixteenth century, for their part, criticized the “new learning” of the Renaissance and Reformation, and were in turn looked upon as obstinate and unwilling to accept the truth.
William Tyndale, a Protestant translator of the Bible into English, criticized the Duns men in his 1528 That Fayth the Mother of All Good Workes Justifieth Us:
If thou shuldest saie to him that hath þe sprite of God / the love of God is the kepinge of þe co[m]maundeme[n]tes / & to love a mans neyboure is to showe mercie / he wold with oute arguinge or disputinge vnderstonde / how that of the love of God springeth þe kepi[n]ge of his co[m]maundeme[n]tes & of the love to thy neiboure springeth mercie. Now wold aristotell denie soch speakinge / & a Duns man wold make .xx. distintio[n]s.
And two years later, in a preface to his translation of the Pentateuch, Tyndale used duns to refer to the teachings of Duns and the Scholastics:
For they which in tymes paste were wont to loke on no more scripture then they founde in their duns or soch like develysh doctryne.
And a 1543 translation of Martin Luther’s Last Wil and Last Confession uses dunse to refer to Scholastic thinker:
But we must now compare the false penance of the popissh dunses & sophisters. With the true penance that thei both may the better be known.
And a couple of decades later, dunce, meaning an unintelligent person is in place. From a 1567 translation of Horace:
Be perte, and cleare in countinaunce not malipert, and light.
Sumetimes the sober man is thought the most dunce in the toune:
And he that locketh vp his lippes is taken for a clowne.
In the original Latin, the second line and its literal translation read:
plerumque modestus occupat obscuri speciem
(the most modest person gains the appearance of uncertainty)
So, Duns Scotus fell afoul of the Protestant Reformation, and his name lives on in an uncomplimentary fashion.
Sources:
Horace. Horace His Art of Poetrie, Pistles, and Satyrs Englished. Thomas Drant, trans. London: Thomas Marshe, 1567, sig. F.vi. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Luther, Martin. The Last Wil and Last Confession of Martyn Luthers Faith. Wesel: D. van der Straten[?], 1543, fol. 20r. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2018, s.v. dunce, n., Duns man, n.
Tyndale, William. That Fayth the Mother of All Good Workes Justifieth Us. Antwerp: Hans Luft (i.e., J. Hoochstraten), 1528, fol. 48r. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
———. “W.T. to the Reader.” The Pentateuch. Antwerp: Hans Luft (i.e., J. Hoochstraten), 1530, fol. 2r. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Image credit: Painting by Justus van Gent (c. 1410–c. 1480), public domain image.