Duns Scotus. Educated in Oxford and Professor of theology in Paris. Apparently his intellect was a miracle, as he was slow as a child and prayed for wisdom. He was a mystic and a philosopher. The poet is referring to this experience in the poem.

During the night of Christmas, 1299 at the Oxford Convent, Bl. John, immersed in his contemplation of the adorable mystery of the Incarnation of the Word, was rapt in ecstasy. The Blessed Mother appeared to him and placed on his arms the Child Jesus who kissed and embraced him fondly. This was perhaps the occasion which inspired Bl. John to write so profoundly and fluently on the absolute primacy of Christ and the reason for the Incarnation. Christ’s Incarnation, which is decreed from all eternity even apart from the Redemption, is the supreme created manifestation of God’s love.

Duns Scotus’s Oxford

Towery city and branchy between towers;
Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmèd, lark charmèd, rook racked, river-rounded;
The dapple-eared lily below thee; that country and town did
Once encounter in, here coped & poisèd powers;

Thou hast a base and brickish skirt there, sours
That neighbour-nature thy grey beauty is grounded
Best in; graceless growth, thou hast confounded
Rural, rural keeping — folk, flocks, and flowers.

Yet ah! this air I gather and I release
He lived on; these weeds and waters, these walls are what
He haunted who of all men most sways my spirits to peace;

Of realty the rarest-veinèd unraveller; a not
Rivalled insight, be rival Italy or Greece;
Who fired France for Mary without spot.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

I have a difference with Duns Scotus on Mariology: I acknowledge that some people were filled with the Spirit from birth but that did not make all their acts righteous. Such people included Samson, who loved rashly, unwisely, and this led to his destruction. Scotus is correct in saying that Mary was conceived in the usual manner: he could not have imagined the artificial methods of conception we now have, but one thing we now know is that such children and adults are as broken by sin as the rest of us.

I have a quibble with Hopkins. Oxford is now full of ugly buildings paid for by Emirs who think they can buy respectability, and the old towers — and yes, I have stayed in a college — are overshadowed. Oxford is fallen. The Bird and Baby is a tourist stop for Lewis and Tolkien geeks such as myself.

But the medieval knew this: they were created, and they could not raise themselves by sheer effort. Moderns have lost that humility. And Hopkins brings us back to that glory.