Bonaventure

Bonaventure (da Bagnoregio), actually Giovanni (di) Fidanza (* 1221 in Bagnoregio near Viterbo; † 15 July 1274 in Lyon), was one of the most important philosophers and theologians of scholasticism, Minister General of the Franciscans and Cardinal of Albano. He led the Franciscan Order for 17 years until his death, and is considered its second founder because of his organizational talent. He mediated between the Fratres de communitate, who took a moderate stand on the question of the Church's required poverty, and the more radical Spiritualists or Fraticells in the so-called Poverty Controversy. In 1263 Bonaventure wrote an extensive biography of Francis of Assisi on behalf of the General Chapter. In 1273 Gregory X appointed him cardinal bishop of Albano and entrusted him with the preparation of the Second Council of Lyons, which was to conclude the union negotiations with the Greek Orthodox Church. He was canonized by Sixtus IV on 14 April 1482 and declared a Doctor of the Church by Sixtus V in 1588 as Doctor seraphicus. Bonaventure was one of the most influential theologians of scholasticism. Leo XIII called him "prince among all mystics." He was in the Augustinian tradition and was influenced by the mysticism of Hugo of St. Victor and Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagitas.

Philosophy and Theology

Critique of philosophy

Bonaventura's thought gains its speculative power in the knowledgeable confrontation with Aristotelian-influenced university philosophy in Paris and is lastingly motivated and shaped by Neoplatonic philosophy. He draws on Augustine of Hippo, Boëthius, Bernard of Clairvaux, the Victorians, and especially Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita. Bonaventure strives for the unity of Christian wisdom as opposed to the duality of philosophy and theology. The basis of all knowledge claiming certainty is for him that the existence of God is an undoubted truth.

God's non-existence proves to be impossible for Bonaventure. He criticizes a method followed by many Dominicans, which is oriented towards the understanding of science, the method, the concepts and some theses of Aristotle. This approach is insufficient for Bonaventure. Aristotle certainly recognizes parts of truth. But as a pagan he does not have the authority of the church fathers. Even the whole philosophy of Aristotle could not explain the instantaneous movement of a star. For Bonaventure God is not a philosophical conclusion but a living presence. Aristotle and his followers erred in denying the primordial, divine providence, and divine institution of the course of the world (triple error). They were blind as to the asserted eternity of the world, the assumed unity of the intellect, and the denied punishment and bliss after this life (triple blindness). The fullness of truth, he argues, can only be inferred through the knowledge of the divine Logos. Since this further knowledge manifested itself in biblical and ecclesiastical tradition, these sources of knowledge were to be the guiding ones. At the beginning of his fourth Collatio in Hexaemeron there is a sharp criticism of the philosophers. One must beware of recommending and appreciating too much the statements and theses of the philosophers. They are incapable of separating themselves from darkness and error and have entangled themselves in even greater errors:

About God and the world

He who places his hope in God is blessed, but he who seeks his salvation in the world is vain. God himself stands in his blessedness and is therefore able to give support to the hopeful through participation in his blessedness. He gives fulfilment through participation in his fullness. He gives rest and peace. God is blessed in eternal enjoyment of himself, and therefore is able to grant to man the enjoyment of his blessedness. The world does not rest in itself and cannot give support to anyone. Because the world is only a shadow of the eternal, it can never really fill man, who is created for the eternal. Nor is it able to provide rest or peace. Whoever tries to enjoy the world will suffer harm. The world gives the impression of grandeur, fulfilment and wisdom, but in reality it awakens pride, greed and curiosity. Man becomes inwardly vain and spiritually barren. Curiosity seduces him into a garrulous "worldly wisdom" that wanders unsteadily and aimlessly. Through his arrogance, man fails to recognize his own inadequacy and excludes himself from the vision of God. In the sight of God, this is foolishness that does not lead to salvation. Christ is the only true teacher; without him no one can attain the knowledge of God that leads to salvation. He cannot be caught up by philosophizing.

The Trinitarian Structure of God

God is above and at the same time in everything, without thereby abolishing his transcendence and absoluteness. Bonaventure understands the divine self-statement "I am who I am" (Ex 3,13-15 EU) as the pure, first and absolute being, the pure and highest unity and the simple par excellence. This excludes from itself, free of time, every way of being possible and thus of not being, as well as every form of real difference from which a whole could be composed. God is the good itself (ipsum bonum) and being itself (ipsum esse). Since God is pure being, his non-being is unthinkable. Since he is the good itself, nothing greater can be thought beyond God. The good communicates itself (bonum est diffusivum sui), a self-development or self-disclosure occurs.

Since this must be done inwardly, substantially, and personally, an inward differentiation takes place: The highest good eternally communicates itself as Father in the witness of the Son and the breathing of the Spirit. For Bonaventure, the sharing of the Trinitarian persons is an absolute one: in it, the whole substance and being gives itself to the other. The relation of the three persons is to be understood as an inseparable being-into-one-another (circumincessio) of each differentiated self in inner-trinitarian love. Bonaventure depicted this mutual interdependence of the divine persons with the metaphor of light:

The divine Logos

In the diffusio ad extra, God's self-development into the world first constituted by it takes place on the basis of his goodness or goodness. The many emerges from the one. Everything is created by the divine Logos. The Logos is the spiritual image of the self-recognizing divine Father and, as the image of the One, is at the same time the Many. The divine Logos contains within himself the exemplary ideas of all things (rationes aeternae). According to these the world was created. The created world could therefore, until the Fall, be read by man like a book in which the Creator is reflected. In the created things (images of the ideas) man perceived the Creator and was thus led to the worship and love of God. After the Fall, man no longer understood the language of this Book. But the Holy Scriptures help man again to understand the imagery and likeness of creation, and thus to come to the love and knowledge of God. All created things are composed of matter and form. The substantial form of physical things is light. It was created by God on the first day before all other things. Therefore, all things participate in it in different ways.

Human cognition

Secure knowledge is possible because God works in man. The creature as a trace (vestigium) relates to God as to a principle, insofar as it is of him. As an image (imago), it behaves as to an object when it recognizes God. As likeness (similitudo), it relates to God as to an infused gift of grace, insofar as God dwells in it.

The transient and changeable world enters the human soul through the perceptual portals of the senses. But the excellence of cognition (nobilitas cognitionis) depends on the immutability of the object of cognition and the infallibility of the subject of cognition. For cognitio plena, full cognition, the fall to an unchanging truth is therefore necessary. Not only does the soul have to grasp things conceptually and categorically in their mutable being, but secure cognition involves touching things "in some way, insofar as they are in the eternal creative art." A created being can only be known when the understanding is supported by insight into the completed, absolute being. Bonaventure thus ties in with the Platonic doctrine of ideas. Ideas are the object of cognition insofar as something is cognized through them: As a formal principle of cognition, they vouch for certainty on the part of the object of cognition and the cognizing subject. Only the specifying properties and material principles derive from experience. For Bonaventure, cognition is a recollection; only that can be grasped which is present in our memory. True being is not mixed with potentiality, it is not the particular being in individual things. It is pure actuality, it is the divine being as the first recognized. The first being lies before all created beings and is represented by them.

Virtue and soul

According to Bonaventure, the virtues have a threefold effect on the human soul: they order the soul towards the goal, straighten its feelings and heal the sick. None of these three effects can be properly understood without revelation. Christian love, which presupposes faith and hope, is the only remedy for the sickness of the soul, and at the same time the form of all virtues. Full virtue is impossible without grace. The individual soul is an immortal spiritual substance and at the same time the form of the organic body. The knowledge of truth is inherent in the rational soul. It strives for that of which it is the image, in order to attain its blissful perfection therein. It is directed towards God. To be able to ascend to God, the soul must make a retreat within itself. In its own structure of memory, mind, and will, the soul recognizes the Trinitarian structure of God and itself as God's image.

The way to God

Many are knowledgeable, but only a few are wise. According to Bonaventure, there is no sure transition (transitus) from knowledge to wisdom. The transitus is an exercise that leads from the pursuit of knowledge to the pursuit of holiness and then to the pursuit of wisdom. It is the task of the sage to teach the path of knowledge leading to bliss. To do this, one must love the eternal celestial and despise the merely present, merely transient earthly. Knowledge as an abstraction of sensual perception is insufficient. True knowledge comes only in enlightenment. This takes place through the divine Logos. He is present in the human mind as an unknowable light. In him the ideas are immanent as exemplary forms of all created things. Although these cannot be known directly by the human spirit, the Logos makes true knowledge possible for man in enlightenment. In four spiritual exercises the soul is to grasp the love of God and the love of God:

1. First, the soul should direct the light of contemplation inward. Through this, it should gain insight into its own naturalness, sinfulness and grace.
2. Then the soul should let the light of contemplation shine outwards. Thereby it recognizes how questionable wealth, worldly grandeur and earthly greatness are.
3. Further, she should direct the light of contemplation on the lower. Thereby she gains insight into the misery of death, the divine judgment and the torment of hell.
4. Finally, the soul should direct the contemplative light towards the highest, so as to behold the joys of heaven.

The goal of the soul is to reach the first, wholly spiritualized principle. The path leads it from the world and man as the exemplary to God as the primordial. In the mystical rapture of the soul, the activity of the mind comes to rest. The mind becomes wholly absorbed in God and finds peace in ecstatic union with God. This path, however, cannot be reproduced; it must be walked and experienced for oneself.

Cardinal Bonaventure (Peter Paul Rubens)


Bonaventura (Vittorio Crivelli)


Bonaventura da Bagnoregio (Tiberio d'Assisi)

Effect

Eight years after his death, the first catalogue of his works was published by Salimbene de Adam (1282). Other catalogues followed by Henry of Ghent (1293), Ubertino da Casale (1305), Tolomeo da Lucca (1327) and in the Chronica XXIV generalium ministrorum (between 1365 and 1368). In the 15th century there were no fewer than 50 editions of his works. Particularly famous was the Roman edition in seven volumes, commissioned by Sixtus V from 1588 to 96. It was reprinted with slight improvements at Metz in 1609 and Lyons in 1678. A fourth edition in 13 volumes appeared at Venice in 1751 and was reprinted at Paris in 1864. All these editions contained works that were later sorted out and supplemented by others. Recent scholarship is largely guided by the Quaracchi edition in ten volumes from 1882 to 1902.

Alexander of Alexandria († 1314) wrote a Summa quaestionum S. Bonaventura. Other commentaries are by John of Erfurt († 1317), Verilongus († 1464), Brulifer († 1497), de Combes († 1570), Trigosus († 1616), Coriolano († 1625), Zamora († 1649), Bontemps († 1672), Hauzeur († 1676), Bonelli († 1773), and others. Sixtus V established a chair of Bonaventure in Rome, and other chairs named after him exist in Ingolstadt, Salzburg, Valenzia, and Osuna. Josef Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, habilitated in 1957 at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich under Gottlieb Söhngen with the thesis Die Geschichtstheologie des Heiligen Bonaventura.

Bonaventura's writings influenced the Councils of Vienne (1311), Constance (1417), Basel (1435), Florence (1438), Trent (1546), as well as the First Vatican Council (1870) and the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).

In Dante's Divine Comedy, Bonaventure appears in the fourth heaven, the solar heaven. There, in a pretty interchange, the Franciscan tells the life story of St. Dominic, while the Dominican Thomas Aquinas tells the life story of St. Francis.