Scotism - Emergence of The Scotist School

Emergence of The Scotist School

It is only at the end of the 15th or the beginning of the sixteenth century that a special Scotist School can be spoken of. The works of the master were then collected, brought out in many editions and commentated, etc. And from 1501 we also find numerous regulations of general chapters recommending or directly prescribing Scotism as the teaching of the order.

Scotism appears to have attained its greatest popularity at the beginning of the seventeenth century; during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries we even find special Scotist chairs, e.g. at Paris, Rome, Coimbra, Salamanca, Alcalá, Padua, and Pavia. In the eighteenth century it had still an important following, but in the 19th it suffered a great decline. One of the reasons for this was the repeated suppressions of the order in almost every country, while the recommendation of the teaching of St. Thomas by several popes could not be favourable to Scotism.

It has even been asserted that it was merely tolerated by the Catholic Church; but this statement is a priori improbable in regard to a school of which not a single proposition has been censured, and to which so many highly venerated men (bishops, cardinals, popes, and saints) have belonged; and it is still less probable in view of the approval of the various general statutes (repeated so often down to the present day), in which Scotism is at least recommended. In their Decrees Leo XIII and Pius X have recommended not alone St. Thomas, but also Scholasticism in general, and this includes also the Scotist School.