ART. III. -- THE SCOTIST SCHOOL.

385. General Features. -- Scotus had all the qualities of a founder of a school; his philosophy was consistent and his innovations organized and well thought out. He rallied around him the most influential section of the Franciscan order. He was proclaimed the doctor ordinis, though we do not know at what exact date;^{1} and down to the middle of the fourteenth century but little attention was paid to any of the other great doctors who had shaped the earlier philosophical traditions of the Franciscans. The disciples advanced on the teaching of their master. They accentuated his formalism and multiplied his abstractions. At the same time their language became cumbersome and confusing, like their method; and they contributed no less than the terminists to the decadence of scholastic teaching. We ought, therefore, to distinguish between the philosophy of Scotus and Scotism.

{1} EHELE, Die päpstl. Encycl., etc., p. 292, n. I.