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Dr. Oleg Bychkov, professor of Theology and Franciscan Studies at St. �山ǿ��, has been awarded a $146,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to edit and translate an important work of Franciscan scholar John Duns Scotus.

Bychkov will collaborate on the project with Dr. Robert Andrews, a researcher from Stockholm University and a former faculty member of St. Bonaventure, and Dr. Trent Pomplun, associate professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame and a senior editor of “Franciscan Studies,” a peer-reviewed journal published by the Franciscan Institute at St. Bonaventure.

The funding will support three years of research to edit and publish the first complete Latin edition and English translation of the second book of Duns Scotus’s Parisian lectures, commonly known to specialists as the “Reportatio II-A.”

Duns Scotus was a Scottish Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, university professor, philosopher and theologian. He is one of the four most important Christian philosopher-theologians of Western Europe in the High Middle Ages, together with Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure and William of Ockham.

The proposed edition and translation will be based on five Latin manuscripts from the 14th and 15th centuries. When completed in 2027, the final product, which will consist of two printed volumes of approximately 1,400 pages, will be the only accurate, authoritative and complete edition and translation of the second book of Scotus’s Parisian lectures.

“Duns Scotus is not only one of the most celebrated Franciscan theologians, but also one of the best known and innovative medieval European thinkers overall,” Bychkov said. “Prior to the First Vatican Council, Scotist thought was an important element of the Roman Catholic theology of the Schools.”

Duns Scotus’s Parisian lectures delivered between 1302 and 1304 had been available only in an outdated edition from the 1600s until Fr. Allan Wolter, O.F.M., began his project to edit and translate these lectures in the late 1990s at St. Bonaventure, Bychkov said. The current project is a continuation of the work of Fr. Allan, who passed away in 2006.

“Ancient and medieval texts were handwritten in various local scripts and heavily abbreviated, so they are mostly illegible even to people who can read the original language. Therefore, the task of editing and publishing such texts in a modern, legible version is crucial,” Bychkov said. [ASM1] 

“Few present-day academics have facility with ancient languages such as Latin. In addition, the thought of Duns Scotus is of such complexity that even those people who can read Latin often do not understand some of the text.”

Fr. Allan admitted to Bychkov once that “even he couldn’t understand all of Scotus’s text until he had translated it into English. That’s why translations of texts such as Scotus’s lectures are so important.”