§ 109. BONAVENTURA. 677
Christian doctrine. Protestants differ, regarding no theo logian since the Apostles as infallible. They have no ex pectation that the Schoolman's argumentation will settle the theological and religious unrest of these modern days, which grows out of biblical theories and scientific and religious studies of which that great teacher never dreamed, and world wide problems which never entered into his mind.
The present age is not at all concerned with many of the curious questions which Thomas and the other Schoolmen proposed. Each studious age has its own problems to settle and its own phases of religious doubt to adjust its funda mental teaching to. The medieval systems can no more be expected to meet the present demands of theological contro versy than the artillery used on the battlefield of Crecy can meet the demands of modern warfare.1 The rights of private judgment are being asserted more and more, and, as there is some reason to suppose, even within the pale of the Roman communion. In the broader communion of the whole Church, we are glad to think that both Leo XIII., the wise pope, and Thomas Aquinas, the clear-eyed Schoolman, occupy a high place as members of the company of the eminent Churchmen of all ages; but this is not because they were free from mistakes to which our fallible human nature makes us subject, but because in the essential matters of the Chris tian life they were expounders of the Gospel.
§ 109. Bonaventura.
LITERATURE : WORKS. — edd. Strassburg, 1482 ; Niirnberg, 1499, 4 vols. ; Rome, 1588-1596, 8 vols. ; Lyons, 1668, 7 vols. ; Venice, 1751, 13 vols. ; Paris, A. C. PELTIER, ed., 1864-1871, 15 vols., and Quaracchi, 1882- 1902, prepared by the Franciscans. — B. BONELLI : Prodromus ad omnia opp. S. Bon., Bassani, 1767. — TV. A. HOLLENBERG : Studien zum Bon., Berlin, 1862. —A. M. DA VICENZA : D. heil. .Bow., Germ, trans.
1 In the tract, Thomas von Aquino und Kant, Eicken contrasts Thomas and Kant as the representatives of two antagonistic types of thinking and study, the mediaeval and modern, that which is mechanical and bound by ex ternal authority, and that in which the individual, the subjective, have their proper place as the determining principles. Kant is the creator of ideas, the thinker ; Thomas, the compiler and systematizer of ideas previously an nounced,
G78 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
from the Italian, Paderborn, 1874. — J. RICHARD: Etude sur le mysti cisms speculatif de #. Bon., Heidelberg, 1869. — A trans, of the Medi tations of Bon. on the Life of Christ by W. H. Hutchings, London, 1881. — A. MARGERIE: Essai sur la Phil, de S. Bon., Paris, 1855. — J. KRAUSE : Lehre d. heil. Bon. iiber die Natur der geistl. und korperl. Wesen, Paderborn, 1888. — L. DE CHERANCE : S. Bonaventure, Paris, 1899. — Stockl, II. 880-915. —The Doctrinal Histories of Schwane, etc. — PREGER: Deutsche Mystik, I. 51-63. For other Lit. see Potthast, II. 1216.
Contemporary with Thomas Aquinas, even to dying the same year, was John Bonaventura. Thomas we think of only as theologian. Bonaventura was both a theologian and a distinguished administrator of the affairs of his order, the Franciscans. The one we think of as precise in his state ments, the other as poetical in his imagery. Bonaventura 1221-1274, called the Seraphic doctor, — doctor seraphicus, — was born in Tuscany. The change from his original name, John Fidanza, was due to his recovery from a sickness at the age of four, in answer to the intercession of Francis d'Assisi. When the child began to show signs of recovery, his mother exclaimed, 0 buon ventura, good fortune ! This is the saint's own story.1
The boy entered the Franciscan order, 1238. After having spent three years in Paris under Alexander of Hales, the teacher is reported to have said, " in brother Bonaventura Adam seems not to have sinned." He taught in Paris, fol lowing John of Parma, on John's promotion to the office of general of the order of the Franciscans, 1247. He lived through the conflict between the university and the mendi cant orders, and in answer to William de St. Amour's tract, de periculis novissimorum temporum, attacking the principle of mendicancy, Bonaventura wrote his tract on the Poverty of Christ.2
In 1257, he was chosen head of the Franciscan order in succession to John of Parma. He took a middle position
1 Prologue to his Life of St. Francis.
2 De paupertate Christi. Peltier's ed.. XIV. 304-409. A few years later he presented the subject more at length in his Apologia pauperum. Peltier's ed., XIV. 410-520.