I’d heard before that “Dunce” came from Duns Scotus, whose scholastic theology fell out of fashion in the Renaissance.
But never that he personally advocated wearing pointy hats to increase one’s wisdom.
I’m not quite ready to call bull$hit on that… Let’s just say that I would really really really be interested in seeing a primary source cited.
I’ve googled around for references on the web and authors just seem to be quoting each other.
Any clues?