Kedar

In reading Kedar's Crusade and Mission for class I came across the following quote concerning Scotus; the context is the later medieval discussion on the relation between crusade, mission, and forcible conversion. The quote is from p. 187:

"Similarly, the prominent Franciscan theologian Johannes Duns Scotus (d. 1308), tacitly rejecting Thomas's view, argues that a Christian ruler not only may but ought to take Jewish and infidel children from their parents by force and have them baptized; he advises the ruler to do this with proper caution, lest the parents be forewarned and kill the children to prevent their baptism. And the doctor subtilis goes on to say, 'Moreover, I believe that it would be a pious deed to coerce the parents themselves with threats and terror to receive baptism and to cling to it thereafter. For even though they would not be true believers in their hearts, it would be still less harmful for them to be unable to keep safely their illicit religion than to be able to keep it freely. Their descendants, if properly brought up, would become true believers by the third or fourth generation.'"