Editing Bonaventure (section)

==Theology and works==
[[File:Bonaventura - Legenda maior, MCCCCLXXVII adi VI del mese de februario e stata impressa questa opera - 2360911 ib00890000 Scan00008.jpg|thumb|Legenda maior, 1477]]

===Writings===
Bonaventure was formally [[canonised]] in 1482 by the Franciscan [[Pope Sixtus IV]], and ranked along with Thomas Aquinas as the greatest of the [[Doctors of the Church]] by another Franciscan, [[Pope Sixtus V]], in 1587. Bonaventure was regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of the Middle Ages.<ref name=robinson>{{cite encyclopedia |url=http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02648c.htm |last=Robinson |first=Paschal |title=St. Bonaventure |encyclopedia=The Catholic Encyclopedia |volume=2 |location=New York |publisher=Robert Appleton Company |year=1907 |access-date=5 January 2013}}</ref> His works, as arranged in the most recent Critical Edition by the Quaracchi Fathers ([[Collegio S. Bonaventura]]), consist of a ''Commentary on the Sentences of Lombard'', in four volumes, and eight other volumes, including a ''Commentary on the Gospel of St Luke'' and a number of smaller works; the most famous of which are ''The Mind's Road to God'' (''Itinerarium mentis in Deum''), an outline of his theology or ''Brief Reading'' (''Breviloquium''), ''Reduction of the Arts to Theology'' (''De reductione artium ad theologiam''), and Soliloquy on the Four Spiritual Exercises (''Soliloquium de quatuor mentalibus exercitiis''), ''The Tree of Life'' (''Lignum vitae''), and ''The Triple Way'' (''De Triplici via''), the latter three written for the spiritual direction of his fellow Franciscans.{{citation needed|date=November 2022}}

The German philosopher Dieter Hattrup denies that ''Reduction of the Arts to Theology'' was written by Bonaventure, claiming that the style of thinking does not match Bonaventure's original style.<ref>{{cite book |first=Dieter |last=Hattrup|title=Ekstatik der Geschichte. Die Entwicklung der christologischen Erkenntnistheorie Bonaventuras|location=Paderborn|publisher= Schöningh|year= 1993|isbn=3-506-76273-7|language=de}}</ref> His position is no longer tenable given recent research: the text remains "indubitably authentic".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Schlosser|first1=Marianne|page=12. n.7|chapter=Bonaventure: Life and Works|quote=This treatise has always been recognized as indubitably authentic. A few years ago, Dieter Hattrup voiced his doubts: 'Bonaventura zwischen Mystik und Mystifikation. Wer ist der Autor von De reductione?' ''Theologie und Glaube'' 87 (1997): 541–562. However, the recent research of Joshua Benson indicates the text's authenticity: 'Identifying the Literary Genre of the De reductione artium ad theologiam: Bonaventure's Inaugural Lecture at Paris', ''Franciscan Studies'' 67 (2009): 149–178.|editor1-last=Hammond|editor1-first=Jay M.|editor2-last=Hellmann|editor2-first=J. A. Wayne|editor3-last=Goff|editor3-first=Jared|title=A Companion to Bonaventure|series=Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition|date=2013|publisher=Brill|location=Boston|isbn=978-90-04-26072-6}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|title=Identifying the Literary Genre of the "De reductione artium ad theologiam": Bonaventure's Inaugural Lecture at Paris|journal=Franciscan Studies|date=2009|volume=67|pages=149–178|jstor=i40092600 |publisher=Franciscan Institute Publications|doi=10.1353/frc.0.0031|s2cid=191451067|last1=Benson|first1=Joshua C.|issue=1 }}</ref>

A work that for many years was falsely attributed to Bonaventure, ''De septem itineribus aeternitatis'', was actually written by [[Rudolf von Biberach]] ({{Circa|1270}} – 1329).<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Hindsley|first1=Leonard P.|title=Reviewed Work: De septem itinerabus aeternitatis. Mystik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Abteilung I, Christliche Mystik Band 1 & 2 by Rudolf von Biberach, edited and translated by Margot Schmidt|journal=Mystics Quarterly|date=March 1990|volume=16|issue=1|pages=48–50|jstor=20716971|publisher=Penn State University Press}}</ref>

For [[Isabelle of France (saint)|Isabelle of France]], the sister of King [[Louis IX of France]], and her monastery of [[Poor Clares]] at Longchamps, Bonaventure wrote the treatise ''Concerning the Perfection of Life''.<ref name=walsh/>

The ''Commentary on the'' ''Sentences'', written at the command of his superiors when he was twenty-seven,<ref name=robinson/> is Bonaventure's major work and most of his other theological and philosophical writings are in some way dependent on it. However, some of Bonaventure's later works, such as the ''[[Collationes in Hexaemeron|Lectures on the Six Days of Creation]]'', show substantial developments beyond the ''Sentences''.<ref>Ratzinger, J. (1971) ''Theology of History in St. Bonaventure'', trans. Zachary Hayes, Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press</ref><ref>{{cite journal|author=White, J.|title=St. Bonaventure and the problem of doctrinal development|date=2011|journal=American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly|volume=85|number=1|pages=177–202|doi=10.5840/acpq201185110|url=https://www.academia.edu/2150520}}</ref>

===Philosophy===
{{Catholic philosophy}}
Bonaventure wrote on almost every subject treated by the [[Scholasticism|Scholastics]] and his writings are substantial. A great number of them deal with faith in Christ, God and theology. No work of Bonaventure's is exclusively philosophical, a striking illustration of the mutual interpenetration of philosophy and theology that is a distinguishing mark of the Scholastic period.<ref name=robinson/>

Much of Bonaventure's philosophical thought shows a considerable influence by [[Augustine of Hippo]], so much so that De Wulf considers him the best medieval representative of [[Augustinianism]]. Bonaventure adds Aristotelian principles to the Augustinian doctrine, especially in connection with the illumination of the intellect and the composition of [[human being]]s and other living creatures in terms of matter and form.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.franciscan-sfo.org/bonavent.htm |title=Brother John Raymond, "The Theory of Illumination in St. Bonaventure" |access-date=2013-01-04 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150224134712/http://www.franciscan-sfo.org/bonavent.htm |archive-date=2015-02-24 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Augustine, who had introduced into the west many of the doctrines that would define scholastic philosophy, was a critically important source of Bonaventure's Platonism. The mystic [[pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite]] was another notable influence.

In philosophy, Bonaventure presents a marked contrast to his contemporaries, [[Roger Bacon]], [[Albert the Great]], and [[Thomas Aquinas]]. While these may be taken as representing, respectively, physical science yet in its infancy, and [[Aristotle|Aristotelian]] scholasticism in its most perfect form, Bonaventure presents the mystical and [[Plato]]nizing mode of speculation that had already, to some extent, found expression in [[Hugh of St Victor|Hugo]] and [[Richard of St. Victor]], [[Alexander of Hales]], and in [[Bernard of Clairvaux]]. To him, the purely intellectual element, though never absent, is of inferior interest when compared with the living power of the affections or the heart.<ref name=EB1911/>

[[File:Francisco de Zurbarán 012.jpg|thumb|right|Bonaventure receives the envoys of the [[Byzantine Emperor]] at the [[Second Council of Lyon]].]]

Like Thomas Aquinas, with whom he shared numerous profound agreements in matters theological and philosophical, he combated the Aristotelian notion of the eternity of the world vigorously (though he disagreed with Aquinas about the abstract possibility of an eternal universe). Bonaventure accepts the general Christian Neoplatonic doctrine, found in Augustine and pseudo-Dionysius, that "forms" do not exist as subsistent entities, but as ideals, predefinitions, archetypes, or in Bonaventure's words: "exemplars", in the mind of God, according to which actual things were formed. This conception has no slight influence upon his philosophy. Physicist and philosopher [[Max Bernhard Weinstein]] described  Bonaventure as a "half-mystic" and wrote that he showed "strong [[Pandeism|pandeistic]] inclinations".<ref>Max Bernhard Weinsten, ''Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis'' (''World and Life Views, Emerging from Religion, Philosophy and Perception of Nature'') (1910), page 303: "Andere Ganz- oder Halbmystiker, wie den Alanus (gegen 1200), seinerzeit ein großes Kirchenlicht und für die unseligen Waldenser von verhängnisvoller Bedeutung, den Bonaventura (1221 im Kirchenstaate geboren), der eine Reise des Geistes zu Gott geschrieben hat und stark pandeistische Neigungen zeigt, den Franzosen Johann Gersan (zu Gersan bei Rheims 1363 geboren) usf., übergehen wir, es kommt Neues nicht zum Vorschein."</ref>

===Theology===
Emanationism, exemplarism, and consummation are explicitly listed by Bonaventure as the core principles of theology, all of which are heavily Platonic themes and carry equally Platonic subtopics and discussions but yet are all rooted in the second Person of the Trinity, the Son, incarnate as Jesus Christ, who is the 'principio' of divine exemplars, from which creation emanates and by which creation is made intelligible and which creation finds as its goal.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Cullen|first=Christopher M.|url=https://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n79043613|title=Bonaventure|date=2006|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=0-19-514925-4|location=Oxford|pages=60|chapter=4. Natural Philosophy}}</ref> Creation is two-fold, expressing the divine truth, the divine exemplar in the Word of God; it "speaks" of that which it is the likeness and subsists in itself and in the Son.<ref>(St. Bonaventure, In I Sent., d. 39 a. I q. I ad 3)</ref> Bonaventure's mature work, the [[Collationes in Hexaemeron]], takes exemplarism, drawn out from his transformation of Platonic Realism, as the basis for vital points of Christian theological dogma: God's love of creation, God's foreknowledge, providence and divine governance, the unconstrained but perfect will of God, divine justice and the devil, the immortality of and uniqueness of human soul, and the goodness and beauty of creation. This also serves as his repudiation of Avicennan peripatetic necessitarianism and pure Aristotelian identified by the Greek Fathers, if left uncorrected by Plato and Revelation which teach the same thing under different modes.<ref>St. Bonaventure - Collationes in Hexaemeron, Collatio VI. De Visione Prima, Tractatio Tertia, 1-8</ref><blockquote>Upon [rejection of exemplarism], there follows another [error], that is, that God has neither foreknowledge nor providence, since He does not have within Himself a rational justification of things by which He could know them. They also say that there are no truths concerning the future except that of necessary things. And from this it follows that all things come about either by chance or by necessity. And since it is impossible that things come about by chance, the Arabs conclude to absolute necessity, that is, that these substances that move the globe are the necessary causes of all things. From this it follows that truth is hidden, that is, the truth of government of worldly things in terms of pain and glory. If, indeed, these substances are inerrant movers, nothing is supposed concerning hell or the existence of the devil: neither did Aristotle ever suppose the existence of the devil, nor happiness after this life, as it appears. Here, then, there is a threefold error: a concealment of exemplarity, of divine providence and of world government.<ref>St. Bonaventure - Collationes in Hexaemeron, Collatio VI. De Visione Prima, Tractatio Tertia, 2</ref></blockquote>Like all the great scholastic doctors, Bonaventure  starts with the discussion of the relations between reason and faith. All the sciences are but the handmaids of theology; reason can discover some of the moral truths that form the groundwork of the Christian system, but other truths can only be received and apprehended through divine illumination. To obtain this illumination, the soul must employ the proper means, which are prayer; the exercise of the [[virtue]]s, whereby it is rendered fit to accept the divine light; and meditation that may rise even to ecstatic union with [[God]]. The supreme end of life is a union in [[contemplation]] or intellect or intense absorbing [[love]]; but it cannot be entirely reached in this life, and remains as a [[hope]] for the future.<ref name=EB1911/>

Like Aquinas and other notable thirteenth-century philosophers and theologians, Bonaventure believed that it is possible to logically prove the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. In fact, unlike Aquinas, Bonaventure holds that reason can demonstrate the beginning of the world.<ref>{{cite book | chapter-url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/#HistOver | title=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | chapter=Cosmological Argument | year=2022 | publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal | url=https://www.pdcnet.org/acpq/content/acpq_1996_0070_0003_0361_0380 | doi=10.5840/acpq199670335 | title=Bonaventure and the Arguments for the Impossibility of an Infinite Temporal Regression | journal=American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly | date=August 1996 | volume=70 | issue=3 | pages=361–380 | last1=Davis | first1=Richard }}</ref> He offers several arguments for the existence of God, including versions of [[Anselm of Canterbury]]'s [[ontological argument]] and Augustine's argument from eternal truths. His main argument for the immortality of the soul appeals to humans' natural desire for perfect happiness, and is reflected in [[C. S. Lewis]]'s [[argument from desire]]. Contrary to Aquinas, Bonaventure did not believe that philosophy was an autonomous discipline that could be pursued successfully independently of theology. Any philosopher is bound to fall into serious error, he believed, who lacks the light of faith.<ref>Frederick Copleston, ''A History of Philosophy'', vol. 2 (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1950), p. 248.</ref>

A master of the memorable phrase, Bonaventure held that philosophy opens the mind to at least three different routes humans can take on their journey to God. Non-intellectual material creatures he conceived as shadows and vestiges (literally, footprints) of God, understood as the ultimate cause of a world that philosophical reason can prove was created at a first moment in time. Intellectual creatures he conceived of as images and likenesses of God, the workings of the human mind and will leading us to God understood as illuminator of knowledge and donor of grace and virtue. The final route to God is the route of being, in which Bonaventure brought [[Anselm of Canterbury|Anselm]]'s argument together with Aristotelian and [[Neoplatonism|Neoplatonic]] [[metaphysics]] to view God as the absolutely perfect being whose essence entails its existence, an absolutely simple being that causes all other, composite beings to exist.<ref name=noone/>

Bonaventure's thoughts on our ability to see the [[Trinity]] in creation, lost or hampered in [[Fall of man|the Fall]],<ref>Bonaventure, ''Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity'', 1, 2 concl.</ref> are recorded and praised by [[Pope Francis]] in his [[encyclical letter]], ''[[Laudato si']]'':{{quote|Saint Bonaventure went so far as to say that human beings, before sin, were able to see how each creature "testifies that God is three". The reflection of the Trinity was there to be recognized in nature "when that book was open to man and our eyes had not yet become darkened". [Bonaventure] teaches us that each creature bears in itself a specifically Trinitarian structure, so real that it could be readily contemplated if only the human gaze were not so partial, dark and fragile. In this way, he points out to us the challenge of trying to read reality in a Trinitarian key.<ref>Pope Francis, [https://www.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si_en.pdf Laudato si'], paragraph 239, published 24 May 2015, accessed 27 May 2024</ref>}}

Bonaventure, however, is not only a meditative thinker, whose works may form good manuals of devotion; he is a [[Dogmatic theology|dogmatic theologian]] of high rank, and on all the disputed questions of scholastic thought, such as [[Universal (metaphysics)|universals]], matter, seminal reasons, the principle of individuation, or the [[intellectus agens]], he gives weighty and well-reasoned decisions. He agrees with [[Albertus Magnus|Albert the Great]] in regarding theology as a practical science; its truths, according to his view, are peculiarly adapted to influence the affections. He discusses very carefully the nature and meaning of the divine attributes; considers universals to be the ideal forms pre-existing in the divine mind according to which things were shaped; holds matter to be pure potentiality that receives individual being and determinateness from the formative power of God, acting according to the ideas; and finally maintains that the agent intellect has no separate existence. On these and on many other points of scholastic philosophy the "Seraphic Doctor" exhibits a combination of subtlety and moderation, which makes his works particularly valuable.<ref name=EB1911/>

In form and intent the work of Bonaventure is always the work of a theologian; he writes as one for whom the only angle of vision and the proximate criterion of truth is the Christian faith. This fact affects his importance as a philosopher; when coupled with his style, it makes Bonaventure perhaps the least accessible of the major figures of the thirteenth century. This is true because philosophy interests him largely as a ''praeparatio evangelica'', as something to be interpreted as a foreshadow of or deviation from what God has revealed.<ref>http://maritain.nd.edu/jmc/etext/hwp219.htm McInerny, Ralph, ''A History of Western Philosophy'', Vol.II, Chapter 5, "St. Bonaventure: the Man and His Work", Jacques Maritain Center, Notre Dame University.</ref>