Collations on the Hexaemeron: Conferences on the Six Days of Creation: The Illuminations of the Church

By Franciscan Institute Publications

Ten years after becoming Minister General, and after presiding over his third General Chapter (Narbonne 1260, Pisa 1263, Paris 1266), Bonaventure began a threefold series of Easter season collationes in 1267 at the Franciscan Convent of Cordeliers at the University of Paris. Why? To answer this question, one must understand how Bonaventure responds to the complexities of his historical context via a particular communal practice of reading.Bonaventure employed the communal practice of collationes to model for his brothers how they should read, not in the grammatical sense, but in the contemplative sense of being a reader capable of integrating philosophical knowledge and theological understanding with the wisdom of Scripture. Such a reader must learn how to read with affectus wherein one assimilates his or her experience to that of the author of the text (e.g., Scripture), and with intellectus where the purpose of reading is knowledge of the truth. In effect, Bonaventure finds himself at a crossroads of different ways of reading: the traditional monastic lectio divina, the increasingly dominant studium legendi at the universities, and the emerging exercise of lectio spiritualis among the mendicant orders.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Franciscan Institute Publications
• Release date: Aug 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9781576594247

Book preview

coverimage

WORKS of

ST. BONAVENTURE

Hexaemeron

BONAVENTURE

TEXTS IN TRANSLATION

SERIES

General Editor

Dominic V. Monti, OFM

Volume XVIII

HEXAEMERON

Conferences on the

Six Days of Creation:

The Illuminations of the Church

Works of St. Bonaventure

Conferences on the

Six Days of Creation:

The Illuminations of the Church

Introduction, Translation and Notes

By Jay M. Hammond

Franciscan Institute Publications

Saint Bonaventure University

2018

All rights reserved.

No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,

electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.

© 2018 Franciscan Institute Publications,

St. Bonaventure University

ISBN 978-1-57659-423-0

E-ISBN 978-1-57659-424-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018950287

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Franciscan Institute Publications makes every effort

to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials in the publishing of its

books. This book is printed on acid free, recycled paper that is FSC (Forest Stewardship

Council) certified. It is printed with soy-based ink.

In memory of my friends

Bernhard A. Asen

Donald Patten

Rest in Peace

"Lord, I came from you Most High,

I come to you Most High,

and through you Most High."

Hex., 1.17

IN THE SAME SERIES

WSB I: On the Reduction of the Arts to Theology

WSB II: Itinerarium Mentis in Deum

WSB III: Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity

WSB IV: Disputed Questions on the Knowledge of Christ

WSB V: Writings Concerning the Franciscan Order

WSB VI: Collations on the Ten Commandments

WSB VII: Commentary on Ecclesiastes

WSB VIII: Commentary on the Gospel of Luke

(3 volumes)

WSB IX: Breviloquium

WSB X: Writings on the Spiritual Life

WSB XI: Commentary on the Gospel of John

WSB XII: The Sunday Sermons of St. Bonaventure

WSB XIII: Disputed Questions on Evangelical Perfection

WSB XIV: Collations on the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit

WSB XV: Defense of the Mendicants

WSB XVI: Commentaries on the Sentences: Philosophy of God

WSB XVII: Commentaries on the Sentences: Sacraments

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION

PART I: HISTORICAL CONTEXT

1. Collatio, lectio divina and lectio spiritualis

2. The Background of the 1250s: Conflicts at the University of Paris

3. The Secular-Mendicant Controversy in the 1260s

4. Averroistic Aristotelianism in the 1260s

5. Renewal, Contemplation and Reflexive Reading

PART II: THE HEXAEMERON AND THE CONTEMPLATIVE PRAXIS OF REFLEXIVE READING

1. The Audience: A Franciscan Textual Community of viri ecclesiastici and viri spirituales

2. Contemplating Christ the Center and the Allegorization of the Sciences

3. Contemplating Wisdom’s Four Forms and the Praxis of Reflexive Reading

4. Contemplating the Threefold Word as the Key to All Understanding

5. Conclusion

6. Relation of Conferences 1-3 to the Six Visions (Four Complete)

PART III: TRANSLATION, EDITIONS, ABBREVIATIONS

1. Notes about the Translation

2. Editions of the Hexaemeron

3. Abbreviations

II. TRANSLATION

INTRODUCTION: SCIENCE, WISDOM, UNDERSTANDING (COLS. 1-3)

PART ONE, CONFERENCE ONE

First, on the Qualities Required in the Hearers of the Divine Word

Second, on Christ the Center of All Knowledge

PART TWO, CONFERENCE TWO

On the Fullness of Wisdom where Speech should End

First, on the Door of Wisdom

Second, on the Form of Wisdom

PART THREE, CONFERENCE THREE

On the Fullness of Understanding

First, on the Uncreated Word

Second, on the Incarnate Word

Third, on the Inspired Word

FIRST VISION: ON UNDERSTANDING IMPLANTED BY NATURE (COLS. 4-7)

PART ONE, CONFERENCE FOUR

The Nine Philosophical Sciences

First, on the Truth of Things

Second, on the Truth of Words

PART TWO, CONFERENCE FIVE

The Nine Philosophical Sciences Continued

First, on the Truth of Morals

Second, on the Wisdom of Contemplation

PART THREE, CONFERENCE SIX

The Nine Philosophical Sciences Continued

First, on the First Exemplary Cause

Second, on the Exemplary Virtues and the Cardinal Virtues that Flow from Them

PART FOUR, CONFERENCE SEVEN

The Nine Philosophical Sciences Continued

First, on the Threefold Defect of the Virtues among the Philosophers

Second, on the Faith that Heals, Rectifies and Orders: the Theological Virtues

SECOND VISION: ON UNDERSTANDING ELEVATED BY FAITH (COLS. 8-12)

PART ONE, CONFERENCE EIGHT

On the Height of Faith

First, on the Mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation

Second, on the Twelve Articles of the Creed

PART TWO, CONFERENCE NINE

On the Threefold Firmness of Faith

First, on the Uncreated, Incarnate, and Inspired Word

Second, on the Fourfold Character of Those Testifying

PART THREE, CONFERENCE TEN

On the Beauty of Faith

First, on Twelve Speculations Arising from Faith according to Four Truths

Second, on Speculating God’s Being as First

PART FOUR, CONFERENCE ELEVEN

On the Beauty of Faith Continued

First, on Speculating the Triune God in the Mirror of the Divine Properties

Second, on Speculating the Triune God in the Mirror of the Generating Creatures

PART FIVE, CONFERENCE TWELVE

On the Beauty of Faith Continued

First, on God as the Exemplar of All Things

Second, on the Speculation of the Divine Exemplar

THIRD VISION: ON UNDERSTANDING INSTRUCTED BY SCRIPTURE (COLS. 13-19)

PART ONE, COLLATION THIRTEEN

On Spiritual Interpretations of Scripture

First, on the Four Senses of Scripture

Second, on the Twelve Lights of the Spiritual Senses of Scripture

PART TWO, CONFERENCE FOURTEEN

On the Sacramental Figures of Scripture

First, on the Sacramental Figures in General: The Growth of the Vegetation

Second, on the Four Orders of Time and the Twelve Principal Mysteries of Christ

PART THREE, CONFERENCE FIFTEEN

On the Sacramental Figures of Scripture Continued

First, on the Twelve Principal Mysteries that Reveal the Anti-Christ

Second, on the Infinite Theories Sprouting from the Seeds of Scripture

PART FOUR, CONFERENCE SIXTEEN

On the Multiform Theories of Scripture Continued

On the Theories from the Seeds of Scripture Regarding History

First, on the Significance of the Number Seven

Second, on the Correspondence of Seven Ages according to the Three Ages

Third, on the Correspondence of the Seven Times of the Old Testament with the Seven Times of the New Testament

PART FIVE, CONFERENCE SEVENTEEN

On the Multiform Theories of Scripture Continued

On Theories of Scripture Signified by the Fruits

First, on Nourishing the Intellect and Affect in General

Second, on Nourishing the Intellect in Particular

PART SIX, CONFERENCE EIGHTEEN

On the Multiform Theories of Scripture Continued

On the Theories of Scripture Signified by the Fruits Continued

First, on the Three Fruits of Christ from the Twelve Enlightenments

Second, on the Four Acts of the Three Fruits of Christ

PART SEVEN, CONFERENCE NINETEEN

On the Multiform Theories of Scripture Continued

On the Right Way and Relation by which the Fruits of Scripture are Perceived

First, on the Study of Knowledge

Second, on Sanctity as the Way to Wisdom

FOURTH VISION: ON UNDERSTANDING ELEVATED BY CONTEMPLATION (COLS. 20-23)

PART ONE, CONFERENCE TWENTY

On the Contemplation of Three Hierarchies

First, on the Celestial Hierarchy

Second, on the Church Hierarchy

Third, on the Hierarchized Soul

PART TWO, CONFERENCE TWENTY-ONE

On the Celestial Hierarchy

First, on the Uncreated Hierarchy of the Trinity

Second, on the Created Hierarchy of the Angels

PART THREE, CONFERENCE TWENTY-TWO

On the Earthly Hierarchy

First, on the Church Hierarchy

Second, on the Hierarchized Soul

PART FOUR, CONFERENCE TWENTY-THREE

On the Hierarchized Soul Continued

First, on the Three Ways of Contemplating the New Jerusalem

Second, on the Four Perfections within the Contemplative Soul

EPILOGUE

III. APPENDIX: DETAILED OUTLINE

Conference One

Conference Two

Conference Three

Conference Four

Conference Five

Conference Six

Conference Seven

Conference Eight

Conference Nine

Conference Ten

Conference Eleven

Conference Twelve

Conference Thirteen

Conference Fourteen

Conference Fifteen

Conference Sixteen

Conference Seventeen

Conference Eighteen

Conference Nineteen

Conference Twenty

Conference Twenty-One

Conference Twenty-Two

Conference Twenty-Three

IV. INDICES

1. Scripture

Old Testament

New Testament

2. Biblical Figures

3. Christian Authors and Works

4. Greek/Roman Authors and Works

5. Muslim Authors and Works

6. Modern Authors

7. Bonaventure’s Works

8. Select Subjects

INTRODUCTION

Ten years after becoming Minister General, and after presiding over his third General Chapter (Narbonne 1260, Pisa 1263, Paris 1266), Bonaventure began a threefold series of Easter season collationes in 1267 at the Franciscan Convent of Cordeliers at the University of Paris.¹ Why? To answer this question, one must understand how Bonaventure responds to the complexities of his historical context via a particular communal practice of reading.

Bonaventure employed the communal practice of collationes to model for his brothers how they should read, not in the grammatical sense,² but in the contemplative sense of being a reader capable of integrating philosophical knowledge and theological understanding with the wisdom of Scripture. Such a reader must learn how to read with affectus wherein one assimilates his or her experience to that of the author of the text (e.g., Scripture), and with intellectus where the purpose of reading is knowledge of the truth. In effect, Bonaventure finds himself at a crossroads of different ways of reading: the traditional monastic lectio divina, the increasingly dominant studium legendi at the universities, and the emerging exercise of lectio spiritualis among the mendicant orders.³ Bonaventure is well aware that how his brothers are taught and therefore learn to read will greatly impact their studies within the Franciscan studia network, their apostolic ministry in the Church, and their vocation as followers of Francis. In effect, education, and therefore reading, had become inextricably intertwined with the identity of the Order and the individual brothers within the Order.⁴ The Hexaemeron models the self-transcending activity of reading within the learning process in an effort to form the identities of both the individual brothers and their communities.

As Part I.2-4 will show, these identities were being contested from both inside and outside the Order. Attacks that challenged the very existence of the mendicants from secular theologians as well as the dominance of Averroistic Aristotelianism within the faculty of Arts, which was making steady inroads into theology, were two controversies at Paris and beyond that contextualize Bonaventure’s threefold series of conferences.⁵ The Hexaemeron records this double tension: For there has been an attack on the life of Christ in morals by the theologians, and an attack on the doctrine of Christ by the false positions of the philosophers in the arts.⁶ In effect, morals and metaphysics frame the discourse of the collations.⁷ And while their context is certainly polemical,⁸ Part I.5 will show that Bonaventure’s intent, and therefore the content of the three sets of conferences (collationes), is primarily a pastoral and pedagogical effort to lead his fellow brothers to a conversion of heart and mind by modeling the contemplative praxis of reading.

To unpack Bonaventure’s communal practice of collationes, this Introduction divides into three main parts. Part I explores the Hexaemeron’s historical context by considering: the collatio genre and its relation to the linked practices of lectio divina and lectio spiritualis, the polemical contexts at the University of Paris in the 1250s and 1260s, and Bonaventure’s pastoral and pedagogical focus of forming a contemplative subjectivity via the praxis of reflexive reading. Part II then expounds on how collationes 1-3 (the threefold introduction to the Hexaemeron: science, wisdom, understanding)⁹ represent an example of the contemplative praxis of reflexive reading, which together provide the substructure of collationes 4-23. This part ends with a table that demonstrates the organizational relationship between the first three conferences and the six proposed visions, four of which Bonaventure delivered. Part III ends with comments about the translation, the redactio and the reportatio versions of the Hexaemeron, and the lists of abbreviations used throughout the translation.

PART I: HISTORICAL CONTEXT

1. COLLATIO, LECTIO DIVINA AND LECTIO SPIRITUALIS

A. THE COLLATIO GENRE AT PARIS

Since collatio simply means ‘gathering’ (plural, collationes), the term had various meanings.¹⁰ But at the University of Paris in the mid-thirteenth century a collatio refers to a particular form of sermon delivered to a specific audience in at least two settings: either during the week or on the weekend.¹¹

In earlier monastic communities the collatio was a spiritual conference that was delivered in the evening.¹² Around 1231, the Dominican Jordan of Saxony introduced at Paris the earlier monastic custom of preaching collationes in the evening,¹³ where the preacher resumed and expanded on the theme introduced at the morning sermon. Thus, a morning sermon was paired with an evening collatio usually at vespers. Like the earlier practice in monastic communities, "these evening sermons in the Dominican and Franciscan houses at the university became known as collationes."¹⁴

This mendicant practice of a double-sermon finds verification in the statutes of the University of Paris from 1231, which mention that the morning sermons at Paris could be followed by evening collationes.¹⁵ Further, on Sundays and feast days when the university was closed, both the morning sermon and the evening collatio could be at the house of the Dominicans or Franciscans.¹⁶ A special stipulation for the mendicants states that if a master delivered a morning sermon in the house of his order, he also had to deliver an evening collatio at vespers.¹⁷

The Hexaemeron is a product of this practice of collationes within mendicant houses at Paris.¹⁸ When such a collatio was delivered on the weekend by a non-regent master, as in the case with Bonaventure, it resembled a ‘conference’ for the community on a specific theme rather than an official university act of the studia that was open to the public.¹⁹ Moreover, since the university statutes stipulate that a weekend collatio had to follow the morning/evening double-sermon format, the Hexaemeron most likely followed this prescribed format. In fact, this is what the structures of the individual collatio of the Hexaemeron indicate. According to the Quaracchi editors, 19 of the 23 collationes divide into a two part pattern.²⁰ While the Quaracchi editors discerned the predominance of the twofold structure for most of the collationes, they did not associate the pattern with the collatio double-sermon genre. Of the four collationes that do not explicitly follow the two part pattern, they still could have been delivered in a twofold schema.²¹

B. LECTIO DIVINA AND LECTIO SPIRITUALIS

The collatio genre helps identify how Bonaventure chose to address his brothers and what he was trying to do for and with his brothers via the communal practice of collationes. As a series of spiritual conferences in line with the older monastic practice, Bonaventure endeavors to teach his brothers by demonstration how to read via the linked practices of lectio divina and lectio spiritualis,²² which was emerging during the 12th and 13th centuries, especially within the new mendicant orders.²³ While lectio divina provides the scriptural framework for conducting meditative exercises, lectio spiritualis offers various methods for interior reflection that mainly deal with the reader’s own affective response to a text, especially Scripture. The differentiation between the two developed into a distinction between the intellective (intellectus mentis) and the affective (affectus mentis) dimensions of reading,²⁴ which parallel Bonaventure’s dual understanding of intellectual and affective contemplation;²⁵ these in turn provide a distinct answer to the dual discourse of metaphysics and morals confronting the Franciscan community at Paris. For Bonaventure, a good exegete must be contemplative, and so the collationes teach the brothers how to arrive at proper metaphysics through intellectual contemplation and appropriate morals in affective contemplation. Both are necessary because both the intellectus and the affectus must be fully engaged within the contemplative ascent.

2. THE BACKGROUND OF THE 1250S: CONFLICTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS

A. THE SECULAR-MENDICANT CONTROVERSY 1250-1259

Bonaventure’s involvement in the secular-mendicant controversy at the University of Paris in the 1250s provides an important backdrop to the various conflicts of the 1260s, which frame his three sets of collationes in three ways: the question of mendicancy, the issue of the new Arts curriculum that was approved at the height of the controversy in 1255, and the critical significance of the Order maintaining a good character by following the Rule.

On 30 May 1250, the question of mendicancy again became an issue when Innocent IV subverted the uneasy truce at the University of Paris between the seculars and mendicants by issuing Super licentiandis.²⁶ It instructed the Chancellor of Paris to license all qualified students, especially those belonging to religious orders, regardless of whether students had requested a license. In response, the seculars issued Quoniam in promotione in February 1252,²⁷ which attempted to limit the influence of the growing Dominican and Franciscan Orders.²⁸

The situation took a turn for the worse following the riotous Lenten festivities in March 1253, during which a student was killed.²⁹ While seeking restitution for the crime, the University announced a cessation of all lectures,³⁰ but three mendicant-regulars (two Dominicans and the Franciscan William of Middleton) continued lecturing. In retaliation against the defiant mendicants, the seculars wrote Nos universitas in April (promulgated 2 September 1253),³¹ which stipulated that all masters of the consortium must swear an oath to observe the university statutes. After fifteen days, anyone who had not adhered to the statute would be excommunicated and expelled from the consortium.³² The Dominicans agreed to the statute, but only on the condition that their two chairs be perpetually preserved.³³ The seculars refused to cede because such a concession would have directly undermined Quoniam in promotione. Once the University resumed lectures after a seven week hiatus, the seculars issued an edict of separation against the three mendicants and began the formal process of excommunication.³⁴ The mendicants appealed to the pope.

In July 1253, Innocent IV entered the fray by issuing three letters in support of the mendicant cause. First, Amena flora (1 July), ordered the seculars to readmit the three mendicant masters into the university consortium until the pope could hear the case himself;³⁵ the seculars refused. Transmissa nobis (21 July) followed, which absolved the three excommunications against the regulars.³⁶ The final decree, Excelsi dextra (26 August), warned the seculars not to promulgate another decree before 15 August 1254, which would allow time for the pope to mediate the dispute.³⁷ Accordingly, the pope sent a delegation to Paris to arbitrate the controversy. At this point, it seems that Innocent IV was leaning toward supporting the mendicants; after all, his pro-mendicant Bull of Super licentiandis is what reignited the secular-mendicant controversy in 1250.

However, the Pope’s support of the mendicants quickly vanished in the Spring of 1254 following the publication in March of Gerard of Borgo San Donnino’s Joachimite inspired apocalyptic text, Introductory Book on the Eternal Gospel (Liber introductorius in evangelium aeternum), which was, at least partially, aimed against the seculars who were opposing the mendicants.³⁸ Sometime between March and June,³⁹ the bishop of Paris sent thirty-one errors compiled from the Liber introductorius and Joachim’s Concordia noviet veteris Testamenti with the delegation of William of Saint-Amour, Chrétien of Beauvais, Eudes of Douai and Laurence Langlais, who were already traveling to Rome to argue the secular position before Innocent IV.⁴⁰ Armed with the Liber introductorius, the delegation of secular masters was successful. Over the next several months Innocent IV’s decrees reversed course and favored the secular cause over against his previous support of the mendicants.

On 10 May 1254, Innocent IV issued his first anti-mendicant decree, which placed local restrictions upon mendicant privileges.⁴¹ Two months later on 4 July, he issued Quotiens pro communi, which ordered that all university statutes must be observed by all university members.⁴² Thus, the mendicants had to abide by all the consortium’s statutes including observing any new suspension of lectures. On 21 November he issued Esti animarum, which stripped the mendicants of their ministerial privileges granted by previous popes.⁴³ In effect, Innocent IV’s dramatic reversal of papal policy made the mendicants subservient to their secular colleagues, whereas before they had been their widely popular competitors. Henceforth, Dominican and Franciscan ministries (preaching, confession, burial) were placed under local diocesan control. However, with the death of Innocent IV, the papal policy would again abruptly and drastically change.

The death of Innocent IV (7 December 1254) and the election of Alexander IV (12 December 1254), the Franciscan Order’s cardinal protector, brought an immediate shift in the controversy. On 22 December 1254 Alexander IV repealed Etsi animarum with the Bull Nec insolitum, which restored all ministerial privileges to the mendicants.⁴⁴ Four months later he issued Quasi lignum vitae on 14 April 1255, which resolved every point of the conflict in favor of the mendicants.⁴⁵ The extreme pro-mendicant tone of Quasi lignum vitae forced the seculars to change their strategy against the mendicants.

Now faced with a pro-mendicant pope, the leader of the seculars, William of Saint-Amour, shifted his attack from arguments over the status of the mendicants within the university consortium to an attack against the apostolic legitimacy of the mendicant Orders within the Church itself. William began to circulate drafts of On the Dangers of the Last Times (De periculis novissimorum temporum)⁴⁶ after Alexander IV issued Quasi lignum vitae (14 April 1255).⁴⁷ William then published the first edition of De periculis after King Louis IX mediated a compromise between the quarreling parties (1 March 1256).⁴⁸

Both sides of the secular-mendicant controversy were now wrapping their arguments with apocalyptic imagery.⁴⁹ Radical apocalypticism – secular and mendicant – threatened the Order on two fronts. From the outside, the attacks of William’s De periculis claimed that the mendicants’ new order (novus ordo) was illegitimate.⁵⁰ Evangelical perfection was innovative, illegitimate, and dangerous. From the inside, Joachimite elements within the Order believed that the Eternal Gospel would soon replace the Old Testament (Father) and the New Testament (Son) with the dawning of the Spirit’s third status (tertius status) in 1260.⁵¹ In short, the new dispensation (nova dispositio) brought with it a new order (novus ordo) led by mendicants, that is, the spiritual men (viri spirituales).⁵² Alexander IV condemned the apocalyptic works of both Gerard (23 October 1255) and William (5 October 1256) within a year of each other.⁵³

In September 1255, before either of their condemnations, Bonaventure begins his response to both William’s De periculis and Gerard’s Introductorius with his Disputed Questions on Evangelical Perfection (Quaestiones disputatae de perfectione evangelica)⁵⁴ William denied that absolute poverty had a scriptural basis and Gerard claimed that such poverty was the only authentic possibility in the tertius status.⁵⁵ Overtly, Bonaventure disputes William, who accused the mendicants of a self-love that seeks their own glory more than God’s,⁵⁶ by commencing the De perfectione evangelica with the claim that complete subjection of oneself for the love of Christ is the foundation of all Christian perfection.⁵⁷ Covertly, Bonaventure also rejects Gerard’s claim that Christ’s Gospel will be surpassed by the Eternal Gospel in the third age of the Church by arguing for the Gospel perfection exemplified by Christ.⁵⁸ In short, Bonaventure argues for Gospel perfection over against any form of Gospel supersession.

It was not until four years later, on 5 April 1259, two years after Bonaventure was elected Minister General, that Alexander IV issues Intellecto Parisiense, which declares that some sort of peace had been reached between the seculars and mendicants.⁵⁹

B. THE NEW ARISTOTELIAN CURRICULUM AT PARIS (1255)

During the height of the secular-mendicant controversy, the university officially published its texts and sequencing for the new Arts curriculum on 19 March 1255, which was essentially Aristotelian.⁶⁰ The new curriculum did two things: it officially recognized the entire known corpus of Aristotle,⁶¹ and it also made the study of the corpus mandatory for an Arts degree. This change pedagogically and institutionally acknowledged an inclusive philosophical explanation of reality that was largely natural; the full scope of Aristotle’s philosophy certainly intrigued, challenged, and caused some concern among various theologians.

Bonaventure’s works from his inception as Master in 1254 to his election in 1257 as Minister General cannot be adequately interpreted without recognition of how his theology integrates and critiques Aristotle, his commentators, and the masters teaching his philosophy in the Arts curriculum. For example, his De reductione artium ad theologiam classifies the sciences along Aristotelian lines and reduces them all to theology;⁶² his Quaestiones disputata de scientia Christi depends on principles of Aristotle’s metaphysics and epistemology to explain the knowledge of Christ;⁶³ his Quaestiones disputata de mysterio Trinitatis, explicates Trinitarian metaphysics according to Aristotelian categories;⁶⁴ and his Christus unus omnium magister, likely from his magisterial period, argues that Christ, the way (faith), the truth (reason), and the life (contemplation) is the teacher of both Plato and Aristotle.⁶⁵ Bonaventure’s engagement with Aristotle’s philosophy and concern over its use would remain throughout the 1260s into the 1270s.

C. LIVING THE GOSPEL BY FOLLOWING THE RULE: BONAVENTURE’S FIRST ENCYCLICAL LETTER (1257)

Bonaventure’s involvement in the secular-mendicant controversy during the 1250s surely taught him two things: (1) the good reputation of the Order was closely scrutinized and could become tarnished very quickly, and (2) not all the accusations of the seculars were groundless, for some of the brothers were living in ways that undermined the Rule. The fallout from the ill-fated Evangelium aeternum taught Bonaventure that missteps proved grave. The Order faced charges of heresy. Within a single year the mendicants lost and regained papal support. Bonaventure learned firsthand just how precarious the role and status of the mendicant Orders within the Church could be. In response to this sobering fact, Bonaventure tethered the growth or ruin of the Order to how authentically the brothers observed the Rule.

After replacing John of Parma as Minister General (2 February 1257), Bonaventure issued his First Encyclical Letter on 23 April 1257, which confronts the fact that many of the brothers were not following the Rule they professed. Accordingly, Bonaventure identifies ten abuses confronting the Order. Seven specifically deal with poverty: handling of money, seeking bodily comforts, pushy begging, lavish buildings, aggressive acquisition of burial fees and legacies, expensive changes of brothers’ residences, and excessive general expenses. The other three concern idleness, familiarities with women, and imprudent assignment of ministerial offices (i.e., preaching and confession). Many of these abuses reflect the accusations hurled at the Franciscans by the seculars. Bonaventure pinpoints the issue: the behavior of every brother implicates all the brothers.⁶⁶ Hence, the lukewarm and halfhearted brothers [are] inflicting severe damage on the Order.⁶⁷

Hence, Bonaventure recognizes that, the dangers still threatening our Order, the wounds being inflicted on the consciences of many brothers, not to mention the scandals being given to secular persons, for whom our Order, which ought to be a shining mirror of sanctity, has become in many parts of the world an object of loathing and contempt.⁶⁸ Keeping with the mirror imagery, Bonaventure explains that the reputation of the Order has been tarnished from without by scandals and tainted from within by dimmed consciences. Bonaventure’s solution to the ten problems is singular: follow the Rule. Adherence to the Rule will bring two reciprocal outcomes: avoiding scandal and attaining salvation.⁶⁹

In sum, the conflicts in the 1250s set the stage for those of the 1260s. The issues of the secular-mendicant controversy, the dominance of Aristotle’s philosophy in the Arts, and threats to the Order caused by the lukewarm spirit of the brothers were not simply in the near past. After the death of Alexander IV (25 May, 1261), Urban IV, a secular graduate of Paris, was elected pope (29 August 1261); around 1266 Siger of Brabant began to claim the self-sufficiency of philosophy, which contradicted some theological teachings; and in 1267 Gerard of Abbeville resumed the secular attack against evangelical poverty, which culminated in his Contra adversarium perfectionis christianae (1269).

3. THE SECULAR-MENDICANT CONTROVERSY IN THE 1260S

Bonaventure’s mention of an attack on the life of Christ in morals by the theologians⁷⁰ at the outset of the Hexaemeron refers to the secular theologians at Paris who renewed their opposition to the mendicants: both Dominican and Franciscan. The conflict heated up in 1265 with Clement IV’s Bull Quidam timere (20 June 1265),⁷¹ which granted privileges to the mendicants that basically gave them exemption from local diocesan control. In effect, the privileges undercut the ministries of the secular clerics as well as the authority of bishops.

In particular, the privilege granting Franciscans and Dominicans permission to hear confessions without the laity first consulting their parish priest fanned the smoldering resentments of secular clerics. In response, bishops at the provincial-synod in Rheims in late 1267 severely restricted the number of mendicants who could preach and hear confessions.⁷² In the Spring of 1268, sidestepping the bishops, Bonaventure traveled to Rome to appeal directly to the Pope, who sided with the mendicants.⁷³ In December of 1268 the statutes of the synod were annulled by the papal legate.⁷⁴

However, on 29 November 1268 Clement IV had died days before the annulment, which resulted in a two-year and four month vacancy in the papacy. Soon after the annulments and with the papal ally of the mendicants gone, Gerard of Abbeville immediately resumed the secular-mendicant controversy at Paris.⁷⁵ On 1 January of 1269, he delivered a sermon against the mendicants in the Franciscan Church at Paris.⁷⁶ Then his Lenten quodlibet in March attacked the Franciscan concept of voluntary poverty. Finally, in the summer of 1269, he edited and re-issued his lengthy treatise Contra adversarium perfectionis christianae, which again attacked the ecclesial status of the mendicant orders.⁷⁷ No doubt, Gerard was reigniting the secular-mendicant controversy by starting anew where William of Saint-Amour had left off a decade earlier.⁷⁸ This renewed attack against the mendicants prompted Bonaventure to respond in the Fall of 1269 with his Defense of the Mendicants (Apologia pauperum).⁷⁹

4. AVERROISTIC ARISTOTELIANISM IN THE 1260S

The other claim at the beginning of the Hexaemeron reads, an attack on the doctrine of Christ by the false positions of the artists,⁸⁰ which refers to the Latin Averroists in the Arts faculty at Paris who interpreted Aristotle in ways that undermined Christian teaching.

The curricular change in 1255 at Paris altered what and how an individual student would learn since Aristotle’s natural philosophy and metaphysics were now required for graduation. That change in the 1250s evolved into changes in the 1260s regarding how the university was organized and who would teach in the Arts:

In 1255, what had been a preparatory faculty focusing on the seven traditional liberal arts changed into an Aristotelian philosophy faculty. However, the faculty still served the purpose of preparing students for the higher studies of theology, medicine, and law. This began to change in the late 1260s, when some faculty members decided to stay as teachers in the Arts Faculty, instead of moving on to the presumed higher disciplines.⁸¹

In 1266 Siger of Brabant chose to remain a Master of Arts in Paris; "This vocational choice reveals the beginning of a new professional attitude among some of the artistae, who decided to remain in a faculty of ‘philosophy’ rather than to pursue studies in the ‘higher’ faculties of theology, law, or medicine."⁸² Both issues – a new terminal arts faculty who began espousing heterodox Aristotelianism – echo in Bonaventure’s collationes. The 1267 Conferences on the Ten Commandments identify two philosophical claims that imply a third, which are all antithetical to Christian truth.⁸³ The next year in 1268 the Conferences on the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit explicitly identifies three philosophical errors that are against the natural, rational and moral orders,⁸⁴ which together, are three errors to be avoided in the sciences, which exterminates sacred Scripture, the Christian faith, and all wisdom.⁸⁵ Bonaventure also criticizes, without identifying names, those masters who remain in the Arts Faculty devoted to philosophy instead of advancing to studies in theology.⁸⁶ Eventually, in the 1273 Conferences on the Six Days of Creation, Bonaventure would claim that the threefold error of the philosophers resulted in a threefold blindness about the eternity of the world, the unicity of the intellect, and the claim that there is no eternal punishment or glory.⁸⁷

Bonaventure saw these curricular and institutional developments as problematic because viewing philosophy as a self-contained body of knowledge without the correctives of theology, which philosophy seemed to now claim via the institutional autonomy of the terminal degree, could lead some to infer that philosophy as a discipline was also an end in itself. Further, some seemed to claim that philosophy, especially its metaphysics and morals, could provide happiness within a self-contained vision of truth. Such a vision constituted a philosophical way of life that actively rejected traditional Christian perspectives on God, the cosmos, and the moral life in favor of a kind of holistic Aristotelian naturalism.⁸⁸ Things came to a head in the 1270s.

In 1270 another outspoken Aristotelian in the Arts, Boethius of Dacia, started teaching in Paris.⁸⁹ Later that year on 10 December 1270 the Bishop of Paris, Étienne Tempier, convened a group of theologians who condemned thirteen propositions within Averroistic doctrines at Paris.⁹⁰ Then on 1 April 1272 the majority of Arts faculty approved statutes limiting their ability to address theological questions.⁹¹ Finally, on 18 January 1277, Pope John XXI expressed concern to Étienne Tempier over rumors of heresy and charged him with the task of investigating these dangerous doctrines.⁹² On 7 March 1277, Tempier issued the famous 219 condemnations against heterodox Aristotelianism.⁹³

Yet the rising influence of philosophy was not only held by those outside of the Order. The Franciscan philosopher Roger Bacon was a renowned linguist and scholar of the natural sciences and Aristotle’s philosophy. His work Opus majus (1266-67), which covered an array of natural sciences, from grammar and logic to mathematics, physics, and metaphysics, had the support and patronage of Clement IV.⁹⁴ Therein Bacon set forth a new model for philosophical and theological education that stood in opposition to the sentence-methods of the theological schools.⁹⁵ In effect, Bacon’s Opus majus deals with the same educational issues that Bonaventure’s collationes undertake: the relation between the arts and theology at Paris and beyond. While certainly in agreement with Bonaventure on some points (e.g., the reductio of the sciences to theology), Bacon’s efforts to publish without the approval of his superiors,⁹⁶ his caustic critique of the scholastic sentence-method of the theological schools in his Opus majus and Compendium studii philosophie (1271),⁹⁷ and his Joachimite leanings,⁹⁸ all stood in opposition to Bonaventure’s own institutional position.⁹⁹ Bonaventure was well aware of Roger Bacon’s renown as an independent scholar who enjoyed the support of Pope Clement IV. No doubt, he also knew Bacon was a role model who some brothers both admired and wanted to emulate, which correlates with Bonaventure’s own purpose for delivering his three sets of collationes.

5. RENEWAL, CONTEMPLATION AND REFLEXIVE READING

A. THE SECOND ENCYCLICAL LETTER (1266) AND BONAVENTURE’S PROGRAM OF PASTORAL RENEWAL

Following the death of Pope Urban the IV (2 October 1264), Clement IV was elected Pope (5 February 1265). Nine months later he appointed Bonaventure Archbishop of York on 24 November 1265. Bonaventure rushed to Italy to request in person that the appointment be rescinded. Clement IV complied.¹⁰⁰ Two key reasons Bonaventure opposed the office of Archbishop: he did not want to stop ministering to the needs of his brothers as Minister General; nor did he want to leave Paris – the best location for him to organize his program of pastoral and pedagogical renewal – where he would be presiding over his third general chapter in less than six months. Difficulties still had to be addressed and improvements still had to be implemented. In short, Bonaventure’s pastoral vision for renewing the formation of his brothers was not complete.

The Second Encyclical Letter, which was sent after the Pentecost General Chapter of 1266, bears witness to Bonaventure’s weighty pastoral responsibilities and concerns. Therein he cuts to the chase and identifies the main problem:

Therefore, after careful deliberation, the definitors of the general chapter, as well as myself, decided that I should send a letter to each of the ministers on certain matters which were examined and discussed there, asking them to be especially diligent in confronting specific abuses that have to be uprooted, because these are infecting our Order’s integrity, lowering our high standards of perfection, and darkening the radiance of our holiness. Until recently, the height of evangelical perfection we practiced captured both the attention and hearts of the world, making us worthy of every respect and honor. But now, what do we see? – large numbers of brothers on a downward trend, an ever increasing laxity towards these tendencies by those in charge, abhorrent deviations springing up like briars. These are the things that are causing many people to see this holy and venerable brotherhood as something despicable, burdensome, and odious, turning into a stumbling block what ought to be a pattern for all to follow.¹⁰¹

Bonaventure then identifies three persistent problems: (1) rampant and annoying begging by brothers for the purpose of erecting costly buildings; (2) the audacity and insolence of brothers who preach against bishops;¹⁰² and (3) the contentious and greedy intrusion of brothers into the domain of burials and legacies, which rightfully upsets the secular clergy.¹⁰³

He then offers two correctives: prayer and/or punishment. Bonaventure and the delegates realized that the legislation of Narbonne (1260) was not enough to ensure that the brothers would authentically live the Rule as they grew as an Order with increased apostolic ministries.¹⁰⁴ To remedy this, Bonaventure asserts that superiors must renew their commitment to enforcing the Rule and accompanying legislation. While Bonaventure’s call for renewed enforcement of the Order’s legislation clearly includes stern punishment for offending brothers, punitive measures are not his first choice. Rather, he implores his fellow brother-superiors: In the first place, urge the brothers in your care to dedicate themselves to prayer; at the same time entreat and even compel them to observe sincerely the Rule they have promised to keep.¹⁰⁵ The prayer and promise of the brothers can renew the enforcement of the Order’s legislation by way of the spirit, which would diminish the need for punishments by way of the law.

Bonaventure responds to a pressing pastoral need with a call to prayer. This call is part of his wider program of a pastoral and pedagogical renewal. By the mid-1260s Bonaventure would have been well acquainted with the brothers’ pastoral, ministerial, and educational needs via his visitations throughout the provinces as Minister General. He responds to these needs by producing works that helped his brothers in their pastoral-ministerial activities while simultaneously modeling a particular Franciscan identity within these various works he produced for them. Thus, Bonaventure fuses identity and ministry. To help them learn the principles of scriptural exegesis and its relation to theology, he writes the Breviloquium sometime between 1262-1267.¹⁰⁶ To help them learn the process of exegesis for preaching purposes, he completely reedits his massive Commentary on Luke sometime between 1263-1266.¹⁰⁷ To help them learn the art of preaching, he creates his model collection of Sunday Sermons in 1267-1268.¹⁰⁸

In the same vein, Bonaventure strove to form the brothers’ identity-ministry according to a wisdom-theology by delivering monastic inspired spiritual-conferences. Three speculative considerations about these three sets of collationes can be posited. First, when Bonaventure started the series of Easter season conferences, he likely intended to deliver them sequentially over three years between general chapters: 1267, 1268 and 1269, with the Hexaemeron being delivered before the start of the Assisi Chapter at Pentecost.

Second, the three conferences are thematically linked: the Conferences on the Ten Commandments consider the formation of the brothers according to the law (sub lege), which grounds the relationship between God and humanity;¹⁰⁹ the Conferences on the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit turn to consider the formation of the brothers according to grace (sub gratia), which builds up the Church through wisdom by the indwelling of the Spirit within individual souls;¹¹⁰ and the Conferences on the Six Days of Creation consider the formation of the brothers unto the glory (gloria) of the seventh day and dawn of the eighth, according to a profound wisdom-theology whereby the contemplative learns to retrace the lux divina into union with the Triune God.¹¹¹ In effect the organization of the three conferences constructs the brothers’ formation according to the development of salvation history.¹¹²

Third, Bonaventure delivers the conferences at Paris because it was the epicenter of the Franciscan studia network.¹¹³ Thus, Bonaventure addresses the brothers who would return to their home provinces and custodies where they would serve as teachers and then most likely as future superiors,¹¹⁴ who would eventually replace the superiors Bonaventure was addressing with his Second Encyclical Letter in 1266.

However, Bonaventure’s three-year plan was interrupted by the death of Clement IV on 29 November 1268. Given his earlier experience in the secular-mendicant controversy of the 1250s, Bonaventure knew the election of a pope unfavorable to the mendicant cause could be devastating to the Order.¹¹⁵ Hence, he shifted gears, defended the Order (1269), participated in the condemnations of 1270,¹¹⁶ and certainly worked behind the scenes to support a pro-mendicant pope, which finally ended on 1 September 1271 with the election of the Third Order Franciscan Gregory X. Two days after his election Gregory issued Salvator noster, calling for an ecumenical council to commence in Lyons on 1 May 1274.¹¹⁷

Thus, with the ecumenical council on the horizon,¹¹⁸ Bonaventure, after a five year hiatus, finally delivers the third set of collationes in the Easter season of 1273 between the ordinary General Chapter of Lyon (1272) and the extraordinary General Chapter of Lyon in 1274 held in conjunction with the Second Council of Lyons in May 1274 where Pope Gregory X presided. Yet, the Hexaemeron would remain unfinished because Gregory X elected Bonaventure Cardinal Bishop of Albano on 23 May 1273, entrusting him with the preparations for the Second Council of Lyons. On 6 July 1274, while participating in the fourth council session, Bonaventure became ill, and on Sunday, 15 July 1274, he died.

B. FORMING VIRI ECCLESIASTICI ET SPIRITUALES: THE CONTEMPLATIVE PRAXIS OF REFLEXIVE READING

The return of the secular-mendicant conflict, concern over the rise of heterodox Aristotelianism, enduring Joachimite sentiments within the Order, and a persistent laxity among some brothers inform the two key titles Bonaventure applies to his brothers: viri ecclesiastici and viri spirituales (church men – spiritual men) at the opening of the Hexaemeron.¹¹⁹ On the one hand, the title viri ecclesiastici stands over against both the claims from the seculars that the new mendicant orders were illegitimate within the existing ecclesiastical hierarchy, and the claims from the Joachimite Franciscans that the ‘third status’ (tertius status) inaugurated the elimination of existing Church structures.¹²⁰ On the other hand, the title viri spirituales opposes both the radical Aristotelians who favor the worldly wisdom of Aristotle over the heavenly wisdom taught by Christ, and the laxity of numerous brothers who were not following the Rule, especially poverty, which is the highest privilege of our Order.¹²¹ Considering his audience, Bonaventure’s brothers would understand the titles he was employing: the brothers of Francis must be viri ecclesiastici and viri spirituales. Each informs the other.

While all these issues certainly frame the dual title of viri ecclesiastici et spirituales, the primary focus of the portrait Bonaventure paints for his brothers in the Hexaemeron is a, "decidedly pastoral-spiritual hue… In a manner reminiscent of the earlier monastic collatio, he guides them into the depths of an authentic spirituality, worthy of their aspirations as second-generation followers of the Poverello."¹²² How does the Hexaemeron achieve this ‘authentic spirituality’?

The beginning of this Introduction claimed that Bonaventure employed the communal practice of collationes to model for his brothers how to read with affectus and intellectus so they could learn to read as contemplatives capable of integrating philosophical knowledge and theological understanding with the wisdom of Scripture.¹²³ Bonaventure integrates various reading practices (lectio divina, studium legendi, lectio spiritualis) to model for his brothers a contemplative praxis of reading consisting of three interlocking characteristics: reflexive reading, textual community, and subjectivity.

The subtitle – Illuminations of the Church (illuminationes ecclesiae) – highlights the formation of the brothers’ intellectus and affectus by Bonaventure’s paedeutic performance of the Hexaemeron: (1) the conferences emerge from, express themselves in, and are primarily explained through, the contemplative practice of reflexive reading; (2) modeled by Bonaventure, the Franciscan textual community at Paris – and beyond via its dissemination by the brother-teachers trained there – identifies itself by such contemplative reading;¹²⁴ and (3) this practice of contemplation forms a subjectivity of understanding and desire among the brothers.¹²⁵ In short, the praxis of reflexive reading is a contemplative activity that forms the brothers’ identity by constructing a particular individual subjectivity and communal identity.¹²⁶

C. DEFINING TERMS: REFLEXIVE READING, TEXTUAL COMMUNITY AND SUBJECTIVITY

¹²⁷

At the outset of his book, After Augustine: The Meditative Reader and the Text, Brian Stock writes:

During late antiquity and the Middle Ages, the spiritual exercises that were associated with self-improvement were normally based on extensive periods of reading and meditation. As a consequence, the reshaping of ethical values in these exercises became a part of the subject’s inner experience.¹²⁸

Reflexive reading can simply be described as a form of meditative or contemplative practice, a practice most often applied to reading Scripture.¹²⁹ Three characteristics further define such practice. First, reflexive reading involves a text and a reader, which, for lack of better terms, comprise objective and subjective elements.¹³⁰ However, the relation between the two is neither unidirectional nor static. Rather, the interchange transforms both the contemplative reader and the text to such a degree that the distinction between them becomes transparent. As the reader interprets the text, the text reflexively inscribes the reader. Such dialogical praxis constructs a habit of thinking, which constitutes the reader’s subjectivity.

Second, the dialogical praxis of reflexive reading involves the creation of a literary intentionality. As the reader works to discern the verbal intentions of God as expressed in biblical writings, the text’s external narrative (object) and the reader’s internal narrative (subject) transform into intentional narratives.¹³¹ On the one hand, the contemplative reader becomes the author by understanding the author’s original intent. On the other hand, the reader also becomes a text because the original authorial intent of the external written text transforms the reader’s own internal intentionality, which constructs both the reader’s thinking (intellectual contemplation) and action (affective contemplation). In this view, reflexive reading becomes a comparison of the two intentional narratives, and the juxtaposition of those stories opens a contemplative space that provides opportunity for clarifying who one should be (future), who one was (past) and who one is (present) as the reader addresses the critical problem of how to transform thought into action.¹³² Stock calls this a narrative self.¹³³ Thus, the reflexivity of contemplative reading is less about the reading of the text, and more about rereading the interpreter as a text.

Third, the literary intentionality of the text-reader interplay relates to the linked practices of lectio divina and lectio spiritualis.¹³⁴ Jean Leclercq describes lectio divina as having three parts: the lectio or active and audible speaking of the text (Scripture), and the meditatio, which implies thinking of a thing with the intent to do it…to practice it, which combine into remembering the text by heart.¹³⁵ Thus, speaking, meditating and reminiscing combine into the one activity of lectio divina.¹³⁶ Building on Leclercq’s work, Brian Stock argues that lectio spiritualis became a distinct but linked practice to lectio divina.¹³⁷ "In the fourteenth century a formal distinction is made between lectio divina and lectio spiritualis. However, during the thirteenth century traditions in lectio spiritualis are already popular in the mendicant orders."¹³⁸

Three examples explain the difference between lectio divina and lectio spiritualis. First, lectio divina requires the presence of a text, the meditation focuses on what was actually read, and the experience creates a situation where silence followed sound. Here the focus is the text itself. In contrast, lectio spiritualis does not necessarily require a text, the meditation focuses on the images or emotions that emerge during or after reading, and the experience takes place in silence. Here the focus is the reader’s response to the process of spiritual thinking itself. Brian Stock summarizes by writing:

In lectio divina the centralizing element in the contemplative process was the biblical text itself. This was the constant reference point for the author’s reflections and therefore for his or her conception of literary identity. In lectio spiritualis the centralizing element was the thinking subject, who was the source of the continuity of the contemplative process and therefore the source of literary identity.¹³⁹

In effect, what the reader interprets, the text of lectio divina, reflexively transforms how the reader interprets, the thinking subject of lectio spiritualis. The reading of the text blurs into the rereading of the contemplative as a text.

Reflexive reading not only involves an isolated reader and a text because it always involves, either explicitly or implicitly, the existence of a textual community or socialized group of listeners/readers. Brian Stock defines textual communities as microsocieties organized around the common understanding of a script.¹⁴⁰ Whereas reflexive reading focuses on the text-reader relationship, a textual community emphasizes reading as a socializing activity where the intersubjectivity of the listeners/readers emerges from the intertextuality of the community’s authoritative writings. There are three basic features of a textual community.¹⁴¹

First, the community’s primary contact with the authoritative text is oral: a text is read. Second, the understanding of the text by an interpreter within the community is an educative process: an interpreter rereads the text. Third, the purpose of the interpretation is to historicize the community by giving it a past, which identifies it in the present: the socializing activity of historicizing internalizes the text. In short, any textual community only needs a text, an interpreter, and a public re-performance.¹⁴² All three together comprise the socialization process of a textual community. Within the process, concepts from the discourse appear as individuals re-perform the text, which shape a collective consciousness structured by normative textual interpretations.¹⁴³ Thus, a textual community is simultaneously an interpretive and socializing event that joins texts, interpretive glosses, and reader response into a single discourse, which shapes the group’s intersubjectivity.¹⁴⁴

The intersubjectivity of the textual community, formed by the normative readings of an authoritative text, both frames and produces the subjectivity of the individual listeners or intended readers. Questions about the interplay of language, history and the constructions of subjectivity are a salient feature of contemporary literary theory. To avoid being sidetracked by the numerous definitions and descriptions of subjectivity, I define the term as: the consciousness of an individual’s perceived states, which emerges from and is confined by language.¹⁴⁵ This definition intentionally situates the psychological aspects of subjectivity within a hermeneutical framework, and my perspective on this framework is organizational.¹⁴⁶ Thus, hermeneutical experience constructs an individual self or subjectivity,¹⁴⁷ which is framed by the textual community (textuality) and formed by the contemplative praxis of reflexive reading (reflexivity). An examination of reflexivity, textuality and subjectivity in collations 1-3 will explicate their role in the interpretive process.

PART II: THE HEXAEMERON AND THE CONTEMPLATIVE PRAXIS OF REFLEXIVE READING

Four main ideas comprise the Hexaemeron’s introduction (conferences 1-3): audience (fratres, viri ecclesiastici et spirituales), knowledge (scientia), wisdom (sapientia), and understanding (intellectus). All four arise from the intra subdivision of Sir 15:5: In the midst of the Church the Lord will open one’s mouth and will fill one with the spirit of wisdom and understanding, and will clothe one with a robe of glory.¹⁴⁸ The audience, to whom one must speak, is the Church (1.2-8), or more specifically the brothers (fratres), the church men (viri ecclesiastici) and spiritual men (viri spirituales) whom God fills (1.5, 1.9);¹⁴⁹ the approach to knowledge (scientia), from where one must begin, is from the center (medium), who is Christ (1.10-39); and where one must end is in the spirit of wisdom (2.1-34) and understanding (3.1-32).¹⁵⁰ With this fourfold division, Bonaventure explains how the audience should move from knowledge to wisdom through understanding, all of which is driven by strong desire.

1. THE AUDIENCE: A FRANCISCAN TEXTUAL COMMUNITY OF VIRI ECCLESIASTICI AND VIRI SPIRITUALES

Bonaventure begins by identifying his audience, which he simultaneously describes as the Church to whom the Lord speaks. His identification demarcates a textual community: Scripture is the authoritative text, which is first presented orally to the community as collationes; Bonaventure is the interpreter who leads the community in an educative/interpretive process; and the audience’s public re-performance of the rereading internalizes the interpretation of the text, which signifies the socializing activity of the textual community.

Bonaventure begins addressing the audience about the prerequisite qualities for membership in the textual community. It must be a rational assembly comprised of members who: (1) observe the divine law, which enlightens faith and strengthens virtue, (2) adhere to divine peace, which is born from the law’s fulfillment in love (dilectio), and (3) unite in the consonance of divine praise, which forms, from many affections, one spiritual harmony.¹⁵¹ The three relationships that Bonaventure posits are significant. The divine law, peace and praise elicit the human responses of faith, virtue, love and affective harmony. These responses are inclusive of the textual community’s inter-subjectivity, and therefore to the formation of the audience’s identity. While divine law, peace and praise frame a subjectivity, the manifestation of that subjectivity as viri ecclesiastici (1.5) appears in the elicited human responses. Note the dynamic: God addresses the Church (Ecclesiae) (1.1) and the viri ecclesiastici respond (1.5). Call and response define the relationship; reciprocity exists between the divine order (God) and the human order (Church), which Bonaventure will instruct his hearers to cross via the contemplative praxis of reflexive reading.¹⁵²

Along with the characteristics of the textual community, it is important to identify its members. The Delorme edition of the Hexaemeron ends with the disclosure that the collations were read in the presence of some masters and baccalaureates in theology and other brothers of about one hundred and sixty.¹⁵³ The numbers indicate an established textual community at Paris, which included at least a threefold membership. The Quaracchi Hexaemeron further specifies the members of the textual community and its purpose. Bonaventure addressed the collations to his brothers (fratres) and spiritual men (viri spirituales), so that they may be drawn from worldly wisdom to Christian wisdom.¹⁵⁴ Contemplation transforms the brothers into viri spirituales as they respond to the dual discourse on morals and metaphysics by rereading the worldly wisdom of science according to the Christian wisdom of Scripture. Accordingly, Bonaventure’s instruction is preeminently practical: learn how to read.¹⁵⁵

For the remainder of the introduction, Bonaventure teaches contemplation’s scientia, sapientia, and intellectus to the viri spirituales of the Franciscan textual community. So, as proposed in the intra subdivision of Sir 15:5, the instruction begins with Christ the center in the contemplation of scientia; it ends with the four forms of sapientia in the contemplation of Scripture; and while the intellectus of the threefold Word comes last, thereby leading into the six intellectus of the Hexaemeron’s subsequent visions, it also functions as the contemplative key (clavis) that makes the passage from scientia to sapientia possible. By doing this, Bonaventure folds all knowledge, wisdom, and understanding into the triplex Verbum – God’s own self-expression revealed in Christ.

2. CONTEMPLATING CHRIST THE CENTER AND THE ALLEGORIZATION OF THE SCIENCES

As General Minister, Bonaventure is sensitive to the critical issue of the intellectual formation of his brothers, and, as a former master at Paris, he is especially drawn to and concerned about the issue.¹⁵⁶ Accordingly, he focuses on three aspects: first, metaphysics begins his ordering and allegorizing of the sciences, which offers his brothers a distinct hermeneutic for interpreting the sciences in preparation for reading Scripture; second, Bonaventure argues for the superiority of deductive over inductive methods of interpretation, which functions as the key theological issue in the Hexaemeron’s introduction because it frames how the viri spirituales understand the hermeneutical relationship between philosophy/reason and theology/faith;¹⁵⁷ and third, Bonaventure ends his treatment of metaphysics with a concise prayer, which evokes a performative response from the audience so that they can become true metaphysicians.

First, in ordering the sciences, Bonaventure is simply following the common medieval practice of classifying the sciences.¹⁵⁸ The classification serves the Hexaemeron’s purpose of crossing from worldly wisdom to Christian wisdom via contemplation,¹⁵⁹ and Bonaventure pursues that purpose by unambiguously presenting his thesis: Our intent, therefore, is to show that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of God’s wisdom and knowledge, and that he himself is the center of all knowledge.¹⁶⁰ Bonaventure’s consideration of Christ as the medium of the seven sciences is overtly allegorical. However, he does not allegorize Christ according to the seven sciences, but the sciences according to Christ. Such allegorization functions as a contemplative practice since it is necessary to begin from [Christ] if someone wishes to reach Christian wisdom.¹⁶¹ Thus, in speculating the sciences, Bonaventure directs his audience to contemplate Christ because it is impossible to know a creature except by that through which it was made.¹⁶² Christ, the author of all knowledge, is the singular center of the seven sciences (1.10-39):

Two aspects of the classification are noteworthy. More generally, subdivision of the classification reveals that Bonaventure links theory and praxis together, thereby connecting the classification with the text’s twofold discourse of morals and metaphysics.¹⁶³ The first three theoretical sciences relate to metaphysics and concern intellectual contemplation, while the last three practical sciences relate to morals and concern sapiential contemplation. Doctrine, reasoned according to the logic of Christ’s resurrection, holds the central place. By such classification Bonaventure ties theory/metaphysics and praxis/morals together into a Christic allegorization of the sciences,¹⁶⁴ which presents all learning as an imitation of Christ because every science reveals the mystery of Christ. The classification functions as an imitation because, at the very center of his ordering, Bonaventure reminds his audience that the logic of the cross and resurrection is the center of all Christian reasoning,¹⁶⁵ which must be directed toward a singular goal: Still, to this is all our reasoning, that we may be like God.¹⁶⁶ The ordering of the sciences literally situates the text’s twofold discourse as centered in the logic of Christ’s crucifixion/resurrection.¹⁶⁷ In effect, the entire classification hinges on the call for similitude with God, the contemplative goal of the vir spiritualis.

More specifically, even though the logic of the cross/resurrection holds central place, Bonaventure’s initial treatment of metaphysics anchors the entire classification of the sciences.¹⁶⁸ By beginning with the metaphysics of exemplarism, Bonaventure opposes the prevalent practice of classification at the University of Paris, which placed metaphysics as the last science to be studied.¹⁶⁹ His re-ordering is significant. Since metaphysics concerns first principles, it should come first, not last, because first principles define the interpretive framework according to which the investigations of the sciences transpire. Although the errors he finds within Aristotle’s metaphysics troubles Bonaventure, he is more vexed by the issue of where metaphysics occurs in the order of learning.¹⁷⁰ Its placement greatly impacts the entire interpretive process: where one begins frames how one will interpret and understand the sciences, and how the vir spiritualis understands the sciences will impact contemplation because contemplation concerns first principles.

Without naming his adversaries, Bonaventure’s re-ordering counters the methodology of ending with first principles, which seems to assume that such an interpretive process is not laden with metaphysical presuppositions. Thus, the ontological, metaphysical, and epistemological claims expressed within Bonaventure’s classification must not be separated from the general hermeneutical premises he advocates to the textual community regarding their specific exegetical method. In short, the collations inextricably engage hermeneutical issues, and it is this concern that primarily attracts Bonaventure’s attention because the first principles of metaphysics are the formal object of contemplation.

Second, Bonaventure identifies interpretation as the key theological issue of his day. The usual culprits for arousing Bonaventure’s series of collations are the philosophical claims supporting the eternity of the world, the unity of the agent intellect, and ethical determinism.¹⁷¹ These three certainly disturb him, but they are secondary to his core concern: how should the brothers interpret, deductively (reasoning from universal to particular or from cause to effect) or inductively (reasoning from particular to universal or from effect to cause). Behind the Parisian controversy over double truth¹⁷² is the question of which hermeneutical method is superior, deductive science or inductive science. Thus, Bonaventure’s argument is not simply over rivaling philosophical truth claims that