| 109. Bonaventura. | ||||
Literature: Works. edd. Strassburg, 1482; Nuernberg 1499, 4 vols.; Rome, 1588-1596, 8 vols. Lyons, 1668, 7 vols. Venice, 1751, 13 vols.; Paris, A. C. Peltier, ed., 1864-1871, 15 vols., and Quaracchi, 1882-1902, prepared by the Franciscans. B. Bonelli: Prodromus ad omnia opp. S. Bon., Bassani, 1767. W. A. Hollenberg: Studien zum Bon., Berlin, 1862. A. M. da Vicenza: D. heil. Bon., Germ. trans. from the Italian, Paderborn, 1874. J. Richard: Etude sur le mysticisme speculatif de S. Bon., Heidelberg, 1869. A trans. of the Meditations of Bon. on the Life of Christ by W. H. Hutchings, London, 1881. A. Margerie: Essai sur la Phil. de S. Bon., Paris, 1855. J. Krause: Lehre d. heil. Bon. ueber die Natur der geistl. und koerperl. Wesen, Paderborn, 1888. L. de Cherance: S. Bonaventure, Paris, 1899. Stoeckl, II. 880-915. The Doctrinal Histories of Schwane, etc. Preger: Deutsche Mystik, I. 51-43. For other Lit. see Potthast, II. 1216. | ||||
Contemporary with Thomas Aquinas, even to dying the same year, was John Bonaventura. Thomas we think of only as theologian. Bonaventura was both a theologian and a distinguished administrator of the affairs of his order, the Franciscans. The one we think of as precise in his statements, the other as poetical in his imagery. Bonaventura 1221-1274, called the Seraphic doctor, doctor seraphicus, was born in Tuscany. The change from his original name, John Fidanza, was due to his recovery from a sickness at the age of four, in answer to the intercession of Francis d'Assisi. When the child began to show signs of recovery, his mother exclaimed, O buon ventura, good fortune! This is the saint's own story. | ||||
The boy entered the Franciscan order, 1238. After having spent three years in Paris under Alexander of Hales, the teacher is reported to have said, in brother Bonaventura Adam seems not to have sinned. He taught in Paris, following John of Parma, on John's promotion to the office of general of the order of the Franciscans, 1247. He lived through the conflict between the university and the mendicant orders, and in answer to William de St. Amour's tract, de periculis novissimorum temporum, attacking the principle of mendicancy, Bonaventura wrote his tract on the Poverty of Christ. | ||||
In 1257, he was chosen head of the Franciscan order in succession to John of Parma. He took a middle position between the two parties which were contending in the Franciscan body and has been called the second founder of the order. By the instruction of the first Franciscan general council at Narbonne, 1260, he wrote the Legenda S. Francisi, the authoritative Franciscan Life of the saint. It abounds in miracles, great and small. In his Quaestiones circa regulam and in letters he presents a picture of the decay of the Franciscans from the ideal of their founders. He narrowly escaped being closely identified with English Church history, by declining the see of York, 1265. In 1273 he was made cardinal-bishop of Albano. To him was committed a share in the preparations for the council of Lyons, but he died soon after the opening of the council, July 14, 1274. The sacrament of extreme unction was administered by the pope and the funeral took place in the presence of the solemn assembly of dignitaries gathered from all parts of Christendom. He was buried at Lyons. He was canonized in 1482 and declared a doctor of the church, 1587. | ||||
Gerson wrote a special panegyric of Bonaventura and said that he was the most profitable of the doctors, safe and reliable in teaching, pious and devout. He did not minister to curiosity nor mix up secular dialectics and physics with theological discussion. Dante places him at the side of Thomas Aquinas, | ||||
who with pure interest | ||||
Preferred each heavenly to each earthly aim. | ||||
These two distinguished men will always be brought into companionship. Stoeckl, the historian of mediaeval theology, calls them the illuminating stars on the horizon of the thirteenth century. Neither of them rose so high above his contemporaries as did Bernard a hundred years before. But both cast lustre upon their age and are the most illustrious names of their respective orders, after Francis and Dominic themselves. Thomas had the keener mind, excelling in power of analysis. Bonaventura indulged the habit of elaboration. The ethical element was conspicuous in Thomas, the mystical in Bonaventura. Thomas was the more authoritative teacher, Bonaventura the more versatile writer. Both were equally champions of the theology and organization of the mediaeval Church. | ||||
Bonaventura enjoyed a wide fame as a preacher. He was also a poet, and has left the most glowing panegyric of Mary in the form of psalms as well as in prose. | ||||
Of his theological writings the most notable is his Commentary on the Sentences of the Lombard. His Breviloquium and Centiloquium are next in importance. The Breviloquium,1 which Funk calls the best mediaeval compend of theology, takes up the seven chief questions: the Trinity, creation, sin, the incarnation, the grace of the Holy Spirit, the sacramental medium, and the final state. The Preface gives a panegyric of the Scriptures and states the author's views of Scriptural interpretation. Like all the Schoolmen, Bonaventura had a wide acquaintance with Scripture and shows an equipoise of judgment which usually keeps him from extravagance in doctrinal statement. However, he did not rise above his age and he revelled in interrogations about the angels, good and evil, which seem to us to be utterly trivial and have no bearing on practical religion. He set himself to answer more than one hundred of these, and in Peltier's edition, his angelology and demonology occupy more than two hundred pages of two columns each. The questions discussed are such as these: Could God have made a better world? could He have made it sooner than He did? can an angel be in several places at the same time? can several angels be at the same time in the same place?1 was Lucifer at the moment of his creation corrupt of will? did he belong to the order of angels? is there a hierarchy among the fallen angels? have demons a foreknowledge of contingent events?1 Descending to man, Bonaventura discusses whether sexual intercourse took place before the fall, whether the multiplication of men and women was intended to be equal, which of the two sinned the more grievously, the man or the woman. | ||||
Bonaventura differs from Thomas in giving proof that the world is not eternal. The mark of a foot, which represents created matter, is not of the same duration as the foot itself, for the mark was made at some time by the foot. And, following Plato as against Aristotle, he declared that matter not only in its present form but also in its essence is not eternal. The world is not thinkable without man, for it has all the marks of a habitation fitted up for a human being. Christ would not have become incarnate without sin. | ||||
In the doctrine of the immaculate conception, Bonaventura agreed with Thomas in denying to Mary freedom from original sin and disagreed with his fellow Franciscan, Duns Scotus, whose teaching has become dogma in the Roman Catholic communion. | ||||
It is as a mystic and as the author of the life of St. Francis, rather than as a dogmatician that Bonaventura has a characteristic place among the Schoolmen. He evidently drew from the mystics of St. Victor, used their terminology1 and did not advance beyond them. His mysticism has its finest statement in his Journey of the Mind to God. Upon this pilgrimage of the soul to the highest divine mysteries, no one can enter without grace from above. Nor can the journey be continued without earnest prayer, pure meditation, and a holy life. Devout prayer is the mother and beginning of the upward movement towards God. Contemplation leads us first outside ourselves to behold the works of God in the visible world. It then brings us back to consider God's image in ourselves arid at last we rise above ourselves to behold the divine being as He is in Himself. Each of these activities is twofold, so that there are six steps in the progress of the soul. In the final step, the soul contemplates the Trinity and God's absolute goodness. | ||||
Beyond these six steps is the state of rapture, the ecstatic vision, as the Sabbath day of rest followed the six days of labor. The doorway to this mystical life is Christ. The experience, which the soul shall have hereafter, is an ocean of beatific ecstasy. No one can know it but the one who receives it; he only receive it who desires it; be only desire it who is inflamed by the baptizing fire of the Holy Spirit. It is a grace not a doctrine, a desire not a concept, a habit of prayer not a studious task, a bride not a teacher. It is of God not of man, a flame of ardent love, transferring us into the presence and being of God. As in the case of Bernard, so also in the case of Bonaventura, this mystical tendency found expression in devout hymns. | ||||