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What were the main subjects of John Duns Scotus’s lectures on Peter Lombard’s Sentences?
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When John Duns Scotus lectured on Peter Lombard’s Sentences—the standard theology textbook in medieval universities—his role was not to provide a literal explanation of the text. Instead, he posed and solved his own questions on topics that paralleled the subject "distinctions" found within the Sentences.1
Consequently, the questions Duns Scotus discussed in his Lectura Oxoniensis ranged over the entire field of theology. These lectures formed the basis for his monumental commentary, the Ordinatio (also known as the Opus Oxoniense), which he later revised and enlarged using his work from Oxford, Cambridge, and Paris.12