After a poetic opening prayer, Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (ca. 1217–1274) transports the reader of the Itinerarium mentis in Deum to the peak of Mount La Verna. There Saint Francis had received his vision of the six-winged seraph in the form of the Crucified leaving him imprinted with the stigmata. Bonaventure describes his own time of retreat on the holy mountain in 1259, far from his pressing duties as the seventh minister general of Francis's order. While immersed in prayer and reflections on “various ascents of the mind to God,” he explains that “among other things” the miracle of Francis gave him the key to his quest for peace.Footnote 1 Bonaventure encounters in Francis's mystical experience the way by which one may come to contemplation, and the inspiration to compose the Itinerarium. He tells us that he will compose it according to the six-winged seraph, with three sets of two facing one another (which add up to six), and end with a seventh chapter of the longed for rest in the divine.Footnote 2 He recommends lenience towards the author, patience in reading, and thoughtful rumination.Footnote 3 In the same spirit, let us explore the conditions of medieval composition with modern eyes and ask the question: was De civitate Dei 11.2 one of the “various ascents of the mind to God” which Bonaventure pondered as he conceived his great mystical treatise on Franciscan contemplation?
Scholars have never questioned the certain influence of Augustine,Footnote 4 Pseudo-Dionysius,Footnote 5 and the Victorines,Footnote 6 on Bonaventure's thought and on the making of the Itinerarium. Nevertheless, Stephen Brown has wisely cautioned that “despite the dependence on Richard and Boethius, the Itinerarium itself is a stunningly original work, giving enriched life to these sources by the inspired meditation that Bonaventure brought to the stigmata of St. Francis.”Footnote 7 With the same awareness of originality and reception, I propose that Augustine's De civitate Dei 11.2 (hereafter DCD) shaped and inspired Bonaventure's project because of its own expansive but succinct nature.Footnote 8 DCD 11.2 constitutes a pithy address on the heights of spiritual mysticism, various grades of knowledge, and the essential role of Christ the Mediator whose humanity provides the “way” and his divinity provides the “the goal” in the mind's journey to reach God. It serves as a significant hinge between the first ten books on pagan history and natural knowledge, and the last twelve books on Christian life and divine revelation.Footnote 9 My research shows that this text was one of those “various ascents of the mind to God” studied by Bonaventure during his academic career in Paris. It was, therefore, still present to him as he pondered over Francis and the stigmata on Mount La Verna. So being, it provides a new portrait of how early Franciscan thinkers understood and employed DCD, one that challenges the common tendency among some Bonaventure scholars to minimize its influence and puts into doubt a new thesis which recasts completely the nature of Augustinian reception. These findings will also shed light on the intellectual and spiritual unity of Bonaventure as scholar, friar, theologian, and leader of the Franciscan order in tumultuous times.
This article will present first a thematic analysis of DCD 11.2; second, a review of how the Itinerarium reflects a continuity with Augustine's work; and third, a review of historical support for Bonaventure's familiarity and explicit use of DCD 11.2 and DCD 11 in general. I will further propose a common reading of DCD 11.2 between the early Franciscans Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, and Matthew of Aquasparta, which is not shared by other scholastics. In the final portion of this article, I will propose how this case study revises present opinion by pointing to new lines of continuity and originality in Bonaventure's use of an overlooked Augustinian text.
Analysis of De Civitate Dei 11.2 as Mystical Experience and the Mind's Journey to God
Comprising only thirty-six lines, the second chapter of Book 11 of DCD is written in a prayerful, poetic tone reminiscent of a number of similarly dazzling short chapters of Augustine's magnum opus.Footnote 10 These interludes offer concise overviews of the larger work, afford mental relief for the reader, and unite a personal spiritual dimension to the demands of study incumbent on such a large and detailed text.Footnote 11 DCD 11.2 provides a short anagoge or anabasis, the classical ascent of the soul through the liberal arts, most notably characteristic of Augustine's early works composed closer to the time of his conversion, namely, De immortalitate animae, De quantitate animae, De musica, De dialectica, De ordine, and De vera religione.Footnote 12 Yet, as Gareth Matthew has noted, DCD 11.2 belongs to Augustine's later work and reveals a more mature tension in his thought between the possibilities and the limits of philosophy to achieve great spiritual heights, and the more clear need for grace in the mystical ascent.Footnote 13
This analysis will divide the short text at hand into three sections according to its internal progressive themes: (1) the poetic opening in medias res that considers the infrequent height of mystical experiences leading up to the encounter between the mens (“mind”) and God Himself; (2) a description of the general role of the mens, its current condition in fallen man, and the normative steps needed for restoration; (3) the journey to reach the encounter with God bridged by the humanity of Christ which serves as the road for the mind to God.Footnote 14
Primacy of Mystical Experience (DCD 11.2, lines 1–15)
Before he launches into the expositions of Scripture and takes up the various theological and philosophical questions found in the second part of DCD (Books 11–22), Augustine gives primacy to an experience which is personal, prayerful, and mystical. Book 11, Chapter 2 opens by declaring that “it is a great and exceedingly rare thing”Footnote 15 to describe the mystical heights which a man reached in his approach to God. After elaborating on the conditions for this experience, Augustine devotes a long passage to making distinctions between types of mystical revelations (lines 6–14).
The opening phrase of this passage has sometimes been translated in a way that diminishes Augustine's unique experience into a universal human experience (“man in his speculation”)Footnote 16 or an exceptional mental function (“rarely and only with great effort does a mind”).Footnote 17 Rather, Augustine here illuminates the exceptional experience to a few privileged individuals, not one common to all humanity. Indeed, the chapter later distinguishes between the mystical experience which is “great and exceedingly rare,” and the common path of fallen mankind beginning with the universal need to “train” and “purify” the mind.Footnote 18 This distinction does not exonerate those few from the regular means of grace and effort prescribed for all. However, Augustine clearly enumerates the steps they have passed through leading up to such exceptional experiences of God.
Augustine explains that the “great and exceedingly rare” mystical experience forming the incipit of DCD 11.2 takes place only after other conditions have been met, namely: (a) consideration of the created universe, both corporeal and incorporeal;Footnote 19 (b) concentration of the mind to reach the conclusions that the created world is mutable;Footnote 20 and (c) conviction of the immutable substance of God.Footnote 21 Only at this point does the mens finally arrive at a state (“there”) wherein it can learn from God himself that “all nature that is not what God himself is was, in fact, made by none other than God.”Footnote 22 After outlining the steps to reach that “place” of encounter with God, Augustine describes another unique path to knowledge: “For in this case God does not speak with a person through any corporeal means.”Footnote 23 In order to make his point clear, he negates the normal human means of knowing that are sometimes imitated in a mystical vision. He explains that God does not communicate by “making sounds for bodily ears in such a way that there is a vibration in the airy spaces between the speaker and the hearer” nor “does he speak through some spiritual means which is represented by bodily images, as happens in dreams or anything else of that sort.”Footnote 24 He specifically rejects these types of revelations since these are ultimately mere imitations of the corporeal senses.Footnote 25 Instead, Augustine offers a powerful description of the heights of mystical experience: “Rather he speaks by means of the truth itself, if anyone is capable of hearing him with the mind instead of the body.”Footnote 26 In this way DCD 11.2 serves as a guide to explain how certain exceptionally elevated mystical revelations come through the way of the mind (mens) following exerted speculative thought and its contingent purifications.
The opening of chapter two strongly suggests a reference to a unique type of mystical experience, such as Paul's entrance into the “third heaven” (2 Cor. 12:2–4) or perhaps Augustine's own experiences including those early ones in the garden and with Monica at Ostia which he describes in Confessiones (7.17, 9.10).Footnote 27 Throughout his writings, Augustine shows interest in articulating the various forms of mystical experience. For example, in De Genesi ad litteram (12.27.54) he makes distinctions between corporeal, spiritual, and intellectual visions when analyzing texts from the Old and New Testaments including the mystical experiences of Paul who articulates his entrance into “the third heaven”.Footnote 28 Our present text begins with the description of the “great and unusual” mystical conversation with God at the start of the chapter; however the next portion explores the way to God through the mens, the usual route for those who are not capable (idoneus) of attaining these heights.
A Description of the Mens, the Current Condition in Fallen Man, and the Actions Needed (DCD 11.2, lines 15–26)
Augustine defines the mens as both the traveler and the locus of the encounter with God. He argues that this holds true not only in that exceptional man, but also in the ordinary one: “that part of man which is better than everything else of which a man consists, than which only God himself is better.”Footnote 29 The topic now shifts from the subjective encounter with God to the speculative study of philosophical and theological anthropology: “For, since man is most rightly understood — or, if this is not possible, at least most rightly believed — to be made in the image of God.”Footnote 30 With a simple turn of phrase Augustine reveals his dry humor and realistic approach to recognizing the imago Dei. If the depraved conditions of fallen humanity (individually or collectively) have so obscured the true nature of the human person as made as an imago Dei that it can no longer be grasped by the intellect (si hoc non potest), then one ought at least to believe it by faith (saltem credatur).
Augustine develops this scriptural affirmation of man as imago Dei (Gen. 1:27, Col. 1:15, Col. 3:10) to a definition of the mens, the power by which and place where man can reach the height of his mystical encounter with God. But Augustine quickly moves the logical progression down from the heights of the encounter with God which correspond to the dignity of the mens. He describes it as that which is “by nature the seat of reason and intelligence,” yet found in a lower condition of being “enfeebled by dark and inveterate faults.”Footnote 31 In order to overcome the distance from God established by the situation of sin Augustine insists that faith and healing grace are necessary: “until it has been renewed from day to day, and healed, and made capable of such happiness, it had first to be trained and cleansed by faith.”Footnote 32 He thus employs the language of the catechumenate and of baptism to unite the moral and spiritual state with the contemplative and intellectual search for God.
The Journey to Reach the Encounter with God, the Bridge of the Humanity of Christ, the Unity of the Road and the Goal for the Mind to God (DCD 11.2, lines 26–36)
In the last ten lines of the chapter, Augustine offers the beautiful image of the mens “walk[ing] . . . toward the truth” and of the Truth itself coming out to meet the mens in the person of Christ Jesus so that the journey may be more sure. This depiction of the incarnate Truth in the act of divine condescension travelling towards a broken humanity shares the image of the father in the parable of the prodigal son who comes out of the house and runs towards the sinful but repentant son who approaches the father's house from afar (cf. Luke 15:20). Christ becomes incarnate and thus “established and founded this same faith, so that man might have a path to man's God through the man who was God.”Footnote 33 Thus the Incarnation of Christ reveals him as God and as man, the “only one way that is fully proof against all errors,” for only the person of Jesus Christ can give assurance for the mind's journey since he himself is “the goal as God” and “the way as man.”Footnote 34
Analysis of Selected Texts from the Itinerarium mentis in Deum
In the opening passage of the Prologus, Bonaventure describes his own two-tiered interior experience at La Verna: first, being there “as when” one comes to “a quiet place” seeking peace of the spirit by means of love. Second, he explains how while being “there” in La Verna and in such a spiritual state he begins in his mind to “bring out,” “ponder over,” “drag forth” — as it were from the shelf of his memory — “some mental ascensions into God.”Footnote 35 Translators inevitably struggle with the rich meanings of mens, and many reduce the phrase to “pondering on certain spiritual ascents to God,”Footnote 36 “reflecting on various ways by which the soul ascends to God”Footnote 37 or simply ignore the plural and translate it as “while I mediated on the ascent of the mind to God.”Footnote 38 But these English renderings obfuscate the progressive distinctions between the search for “peace of the spirit (spiritus) by love (amore),” and the “mental ascensions (mentales ascensiones) to God by the mind (mens).”
Bonaventure here describes discovering “among other things” the miracle of the stigmata of Saint Francis as the core of his solution to the speculative questions of the relationship between philosophy and spirituality.Footnote 39 His interpretation of the stigmata and the six-tiered ascent of the soul to God in the person of Francis defines the structure and meaning of the Itinerarium as a whole. The project also allows Bonaventure to address the weighty internal political debates raging among the Franciscan friars at that time: whether the friars should pursue scholarship or observe a radical poverty far from books and universities.Footnote 40
Bonaventure further depicts the stigmata as a singular mystical contemplative ecstasy which can only be reached through ardent love of the Crucified; it resembles the mystical heights experienced by Paul.Footnote 41 This mystical encounter, however, creates an enduring effect on the body of Francis. The stigmata of Francis following his mystical ascent results from the vision of the man on the crucifix surrounded by the six wings of the seraph. Bonaventure instructs his reader that the six wings “to be rightly understood as signifying the six uplifting illuminations by which the soul is disposed, as by certain grades or steps, to pass over to peace through the ecstatic transports of Christian wisdom.”Footnote 42 In this way he invokes an existing scholastic view of the stages of contemplation and the wings of seraphim or cherubim which he would have learned in Paris, and ties it to the mystical experience of Francis. Most notably, the Benjamin Maior of Richard of St. Victor reinforces the six-part structure,Footnote 43 as do, of course, the genre of short works concerning the six wings of the cherubim produced by Alain Lille under the influence of Hugh of St. Victor.Footnote 44 Bonaventure further develops the role and importance of the numbers three and six in relation to the six-winged seraph and in Chapter 1.3–6 just as Augustine does in DCD 11.9 and 11.30. The humanity of Francis receives bodily the five wounds of the Crucified one who is framed by these six-fold wings, three on each side. The rest of the Itinerarium is in fact structured around the six steps concluding in the seventh which constitute the chapters of the book, the steps of the throne of Solomon.
Let us now examine in greater detail how the mystical spirituality and philosophical assertions found in DCD 11.2 appear to have been among Bonaventure's exemplars of the “various ascents of the mind to God.”Footnote 45 Prominent texts from the Itinerarium parallel and suggest the influence of the thematic divisions of Augustine's text as outlined above: (1) the poetic opening in medias res considering the height of infrequent mystical experiences leading up to the encounter between the “mind” (mens) and God Himself; (2) a description of the general role of the mens, its current condition in fallen man, and the normative steps needed for reform; and (3) the journey to reach the encounter with God bridged by the humanity of Christ which serves as the road for the mind to God.
Primacy of Mystical Experience (DCD 11.2, lines 1–15) in the Itinerarium
As in DCD 11.2, mystical experience enables one to progress towards the philosophical and theological goals of the Itinerarium. From the beginning Francis is assigned the special role of “our guide and father” who intercedes for the journey especially because of his own experience. And as in DCD 11.2, the mens is essential to this mystical experience. Bonaventure carefully concludes the opening invocation with an ingenious patchwork of scriptural phrases and his own philosophical terms: that [the Eternal Father] may enlighten the eyes of our mind to guide our feet into that way of peace which surpasses all understanding.Footnote 46 Notably, “of our mind (mentis nostrae)” is Bonaventure's addition to the Pauline text “may enlighten the eyes (det illuminatos oculos).”Footnote 47 So too, in linking the texts of Luke 1:79 and Philippians 4:7 he has inserted the demonstrative “of that (illius) way of peace” as the new phrase concludes with an experience of peace beyond the experience of the senses. We may recall here Augustine's choice of mens (as opposed to spiritus, anima, or other spiritual terms) as that which transcends the experiences of the senses in order reach a direct encounter with God: “Rather he speaks by means of the truth itself, if anyone is capable of hearing him with the mind (mente) instead of the body (corpore).”Footnote 48 The direct communication of Truth to the mind as described here is also related to Augustine's 83 Quaestiones (q. 51, 2, 4) which Bonaventure cites twice in the Itinerarium.Footnote 49
Bonaventure likewise ties the mystical experience of Francis to the mens when he describes the impact of the love of the Crucified as “this love so absorbed the soul (mentem) of Francis, that his spirit (mens) shown through his flesh (carne).”Footnote 50 Despite the imprecision of the English translation, Bonaventure is naming the mens as the link between Francis's mystical love and physical manifestation of the stigmata. Bonaventure's language and treatment of Francis's heroic mental and physical conformity with the passion of Christ also echoes Augustine's description of the martyrs in De Patientia in terms of mens and caro (not anima/spiritus and corpus).Footnote 51 For Bonaventure, the mystical experience of Francis now provides a vivid example of the way of the mind's ascent to God by reflection, mystical experience and physical martyrdom.
Bonaventure also explicitly relates the mystical transformation of Francis to that of Paul:
The road to this peace is through nothing else than a most ardent love of the Crucified, the love which so transformed Paul into Christ when he was rapt to the third heaven that he declared: With Christ I am nailed to the Cross. It is now no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me. And this love so absorbed the soul of Francis too that his spirit shone through his flesh the last two years of his life, when he bore the most holy marks of the Passion in his body.Footnote 52
As noted above, Augustine describes similar mystical experiences in DCD 11.2 and addresses the example of Paul directly in a gripping poetic excursus in the apostle's honor in DCD 14.9, which follows a description of the Christian's way of living the passions as opposed to the model of the Stoic philosophers (14.8). Such a formal ode to Paul applying the faculties and passions of the soul to the life of a preeminent saint would probably not have gone unnoticed for a sensitive and astute reader like Bonaventure. Towards the end of his Sermon on Holy Saturday, Bonaventure encourages the simple friars not to be discouraged if they do not reach the heights of contemplation, adding that “it is nonetheless a great thing (magnum tamen est) that the Christian way of life has men who do.”Footnote 53 Both Augustine's treatment of Paul's entrance into “the third heaven” in 2 Corinthians 12:2–4 discussed in De Genesi ad litteram (12.27.54) as well as the passages in Books 11 and 14 of DCD may have been among the well-known descriptions of such mysticism that helped Bonaventure interpret the events surrounding Francis at La Verna.
A Description of the Mens, the Current Condition in Fallen Man, and the Actions Needed (DCD 11.2, lines 15–26) in the Itinerarium
Further on in the Prologue of the Itinerarium, Bonaventure describes how to prepare for the same union and “way of peace” enjoyed by Francis. The way to become a “man of desires”Footnote 54 is a commitment to prayer and to a series of speculative acts akin to the various steps undertaken by the mens in DCD 11.2, 1–2. Bonaventure exhorts the reader to imitate Daniel thus: “Now such desires are enkindled in us in two ways: through the outcries of the prayer, which makes us groan from anguish of heart, and through the refulgence of speculation by which our mind most directly and intently turns itself toward the rays of light.”Footnote 55
In Chapter 1.2, Bonaventure builds on the scriptural affirmation of man as imago Dei (Gen. 1:27, Col. 1:15, Col. 3:10) much in the same way that Augustine did in DCD 11.2, 18ff, presenting the imago Dei as the mens, both the power “whereby” and the place “in which” man can reach the height of his mystical encounter with God: “Next we must enter into our mind which is the image of God — an image which is everlasting, spiritual and within us. And this is to enter the truth of God.”Footnote 56 Just as Augustine described the steps of the mens, from contemplating the created and mutable universe to the immutable God, Bonaventure identifies the steps that lead to the interior “entrance into our mind” and into “the truth of God” as successive kinds of knowledge. Contemplation of the vestiges of God's presence found in the created world forms the ladder to reach God.
After describing the progressive steps of knowledge through contemplation of the vestiges, Bonaventure rather suddenly plunges downward to sum up the fallen condition in classically Augustinian terms: “We have these powers implanted within us by nature, deformed through sin, reformed through grace. They must be cleansed by justice, trained by knowledge, and perfected by wisdom.”Footnote 57 This diagnosis and intellectual therapeutic program parallels Augustine's logical progression from establishing the dignity of the mens as that which is “by nature the seat of reason and intelligence” down to its fallen condition of being “enfeebled by dark and inveterate faults.”Footnote 58
Just as Augustine calls for a renewal and healing “from day to day” as the mens is “trained and cleansed by faith”Footnote 59 so too does Bonaventure propose the “three days’ journey in the wilderness.”Footnote 60 Moreover, Bonaventure attributes levels of knowledge to the days and times of day:
This is the three-fold enlightenment of a single day: the first is like evening; the second, morning; and the third, noon day. It reflects the threefold existence of things: in matter, in the understanding, and in the eternal art, according to which it was said: Let it be made, He made it, and it was made.Footnote 61
This imagery is found almost exactly in DCD 11.7 where Augustine compares degrees of knowledge to the various degrees of illumination in a single day:
Now, in comparison with the creator's knowledge, a creature's knowledge is like the dusk of an evening. But when that knowledge is directed to the praise and love of the creator, it becomes the full light of morning, and it never sinks into night as long as the creator is not abandoned out of love for a creature.Footnote 62
Bonaventure continues in Chapter 1 to name the levels of knowledge which will form the structure of his chapters:
Finally, it reflects the threefold substance in Christ, Who is our ladder, the corporeal, the spiritual, and the divine substance. In keeping with this threefold progression, our mind has three principle ways of perceiving. In the first way it looks at the corporeal things outside itself, and so acting, it is called animality or sensitivity. In the second, it looks within itself, and is then called spirit. In the third, it looks above itself, and is then called mind.Footnote 63
Here we find the main themes of DCD Book 11 gathered all together: the meaning of the first days described in Genesis, the creation of the angels, the degrees of knowledge. Augustine further describes the distinction of the days of creation as made “on account of the seven phases of knowledge, namely, the six of the works that God created, and the seventh of God's rest”Footnote 64 and treats the days of creation, forms of knowledge and angels throughout Book 11.Footnote 65 The similarities in terminology — particularly in the use of mens — and the parallel progression of Augustine and Bonaventure's accounts of ascent lead us to the two concluding themes of Augustine's short chapter and Bonaventure's conception of the Itinerarium: the journey and the way.
The Journey to Reach the Encounter with God, the Bridge of the Humanity of Christ, the Unity of the Road and the Goal for the Mind to God (DCD XI.2, lines 26–36) in the Itinerarium
For Bonaventure, the stigmata of Francis present the contemporary imitation of Christ as the incarnate union between the mind and the flesh, between contemplation and speculation: “As I reflected on this marvel, it immediately seemed to me that this vision suggested the uplifting of Saint Francis in contemplation and that it pointed out the way by which that state of contemplation can be reached.”Footnote 66 The next phrase maps out the entire Itinerarium:
The six wings of the seraph can be rightly understood as the six uplifting illuminations by which the soul is disposed by certain grades or steps, to pass over to peace through the ecstatic transports of Christian wisdom. The road to this peace is through nothing else than a most ardent love of the Crucified . . . Footnote 67
This powerful image with which the Itinerarium begins is also where it ends. In the final chapter in which Bonaventure describes the mens beholding Christ hanging on the cross, he reiterates: “This also was shown to the Blessed Francis, when in a transport of contemplation.”Footnote 68
Augustine concludes Book 11.2 in precisely the same way, arguing that the humanity of Christ provides “a path to man's God through the man who was God,”Footnote 69 that is, through the incarnate Word, the “only one way that is fully proof against all errors.”Footnote 70 The love for the Crucified described by Bonaventure is the same assurance of the mind's journey ascribed by Augustine to the person of Jesus Christ since he is “the goal as God” and “the way as man.”Footnote 71 Thus, for Augustine and Bonaventure, Christ is inextricably linked to the way to God. For Bonaventure, the vision and love for the Crucified is the via, the road the mind travels to God. In Augustine's pithy phrase, Christ is the “goal as God” and the “way as man.” This was the way that Francis experienced the great mystical union with God: “This love so absorbed the soul of Francis, that his spirit shown through his flesh.”Footnote 72
Having examined the strong textual and thematic parallels between DCD 11.2 and the Itinerarium, let us consider whether such a massive historical-theological work like DCD could possibly play a role in so original and spiritually charged a work as the Itinerarium. Bonaventure not only used Augustine's classic work — and Book 11 in particular — elsewhere in his writings, but he praised it by name, as we shall see. These integrated endorsements reinforce the probability that DCD 11.2 constituted one of the “various ascents [of] the mind to God” that he brought forth from his trained memory “to ponder” at La Verna thirty-three years after the death of St. Francis.
De Civitate Dei in the Writings of Bonaventure
As a formally educated cleric in thirteenth-century Europe, Bonaventure was heir to the pervasive influence of Augustine from the late patristic and early medieval period down to his own day. He received a thorough education in both Augustine's own thought and words as well as through the secondary vectors of transmission and interpretation produced at the abbey of Saint Victor, enshrined in the Sentences of Peter Lombard, and woven into the corpus of medieval biblical commentaries — all of which were built on the foundation of Augustine's seminal works.Footnote 73 Although DCD is a central text of Augustine, the massive work has remained notably ignored when scholars identify the central Augustinian texts influential for early Franciscans.Footnote 74 Nevertheless, some past scholarship has identified a few textual and thematic influences of DCD on the Itinerarium.Footnote 75 These three distinct passages appear in various chapters of Bonaventure's text. They include the following:
While these examples aid our vision of how DCD contributed to the Itinerarium, it has proven instructive to look at the 170 instances where Bonaventure refers to the title “De civitate Dei” in his own writings. I take the textual presence of the title “De civitate Dei” as an explicit indicator of awareness in Bonaventure's thought, whether he is simply repeating references within a known tradition or making his own an original use of Augustine. Seen together these references demonstrate his wide-ranging familiarity with Augustine's magnum opus.
The title “De civitate Dei” appears 135 times in Bonaventure's Commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (1250–52). Such references are not to be taken as necessarily original to Bonaventure per se, but rather they witness to the centrality of the work for the scholastic conversations and offer evidence of his familiarity with the text over the course of many years.Footnote 82 Bonaventure also mentions the title “De civitate Dei” in thirty-five other passages ranging from early formal theological works to pastoral sermons and his unfinished Hexaëmeron.
Bonaventure names Augustine's DCD explicitly in various important works predating the Itinerarium, as well as in ongoing later works. The title appears nine times in De scientia Christi (1254),Footnote 83 five times in Quaestiones disputatae de mysterio Trinitatis (1254),Footnote 84 three times in Quaestiones disputatae de perfectione evangelica (1255).Footnote 85 He also cites “De Civitate Dei” four times in biblical commentaries, once in On John (1254–57)Footnote 86 and three times in On Luke.Footnote 87 Even in his later preaching Bonaventure does not hesitate to name DCD as his source and to return explicitly to three central passages. He cites Book 17 of DCD concerning Solomon as a figure of Christ in three different sermons.Footnote 88 Four homilies demonstrate how Bonaventure integrated DCD 22 into his preaching: two named references to DCD on the future absence of corruption,Footnote 89 and quoting the poetic incipit of DCD's final chapter on the joys of heaven appears twice as well.Footnote 90 The passage from DCD 8 which appears three times in the Itinerarium as noted above also resurfaces in his preaching,Footnote 91 together with the famous definition of the “peace of the whole universe” in DCD 19.Footnote 92 At the end of his life he continues to integrate references to DCD into his studies on the Hexaëmeron, explicitly naming it seven times between the short and long versions.Footnote 93 The number of these references to the title alone, often accompanied by contextual echoes, demonstrates that Bonaventure knew and respected DCD and chose to integrate key passages of it into his own thought. It is a work of Augustine present across the range of his original writings: scholarly, theological, pastoral, and mystical.
DCD 11 in Bonaventure's Early Works
Bonaventure's specific use of DCD 11 and his awareness of the text of DCD 11.2 can be noted in his commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, revealing diverse implementation of DCD 11 as a supporting authority.
DCD 11 also appears prominently in his even more original work Omnium artifex, the first half (commendatio) of Bonaventure's two-part inaugural sermon. The second half (resumptio) is better known and has long circulated under the title De reductione artium ad theologiam.Footnote 94 In Omnium artifex dated most likely to 1254,Footnote 95 Bonaventure cites sixteen different works of Augustine, but DCD most of all: ten references to the title, and thirteen different passages cited or named.Footnote 96 The passages come from across six books in the work with various citations drawn from Books 11 and 18. Sometimes the passages are paraphrased or adapted quotations, and on a few occasions the chapter citations do not correspond exactly to the text (either from memory lapse, or apparent scribal error in dictation or copying). An overview of these references in Omnium artifex will aid us in detecting Bonaventure's own manner of ordering the selections.
It is significant that Bonaventure cites DCD 11.1 and 11.3 (twice) in this inaugural sermon, demonstrating both his familiarity with the first chapters of this Book and the references to the mediator which bridge the close of 11.2 with the opening lines of 11.3 cited in the sermon.Footnote 97
Another of the most significant references to DCD appears in Bonaventure's “Letter to an Unknown Master” (1254–55). Here he articulates his view of DCD by recommending its use for specific fields of inquiry:
After all, no one describes the nature of time and of matter better than Augustine as he probes and discusses them in his Confessions; no one has explained the origins of forms and the development of things better than he in his Literal Commentary on Genesis; no one has better treated questions on the soul and on God than he in his book On the Trinity; and no one has better explained the nature of angels and the creation of the world than he in The City of God. To put it briefly, our masters of theology have set down little or nothing in their writings that you will not find in the books of Augustine himself.Footnote 98
Bonaventure's recommendation of De civitate Dei for the study of angels and the creation of the world must refer to Book 11 since that is precisely where Augustine writes most about angels.Footnote 99 Book 11 also addresses time,Footnote 100 creation,Footnote 101 and grades of knowledgeFootnote 102 both in terms of the degrees of light within a day (night-morning-day)Footnote 103 and in the progression of the six days of creation.Footnote 104 Both of these images of time and knowledge are later found as central themes in the Prologue and first chapter of the Itinerarium.
Contra philosophos as a Common Franciscan Point of Reception for DCD 11.2?
Concerning the oneness of wisdom, Bonaventure cites DCD 11.10 in each of the first three questions of De scientia Christi.Footnote 105 Closer scrutiny reveals that while he names his source, he twice cites the text with a marked variation. Augustine's original text describes sapientia as having “in her” many thensauri, “treasure-boxes” or “store-houses,” of intelligible things, some of them are “infinite treasure-boxes” while others are “finite treasure-boxes” (sunt infiniti quidam eique finiti thensauri rerum intellegibilium).Footnote 106 Wisdom herself is one, but within her there are these different kinds of cabinets for intelligible things.Footnote 107 By contrast, Bonaventure renders the phrase so that in wisdom there are “certain infinite things” and there are “finite treasure-boxes of intelligible things” (sunt infinita quaedam eique finiti thesauri rerum intellegibilium).Footnote 108 In these two instances, Bonaventure has employed a variation of the nominative neuter plural, though he has adapted the second infiniti to finiti which is more like the turn of phrase in the original Augustine.Footnote 109 The digital corpus of edited Latin manuscripts to dateFootnote 110 identifies the presence of this same main variant of DCD 11.10 in only two other medieval authors: Alexander of Hales (ca. 1185–1245)Footnote 111 and Matthew of Aquasparta (1237–1302).Footnote 112 However, even earlier than these Franciscans it also appears uniquely in the sixth-century anonymous work Contra philosophos (sunt infinita quaedam eique infiniti thesauri rerum intellegibilium).Footnote 113
The variation of DCD 11.10 corresponds to the fifth disputatio of the Contra philosophos (hereafter CP), a sophisticated florilegium of Augustinian texts arranged into five books of thirty-one disputationes between Augustine and various philosophers. The work was first identified in 1942 by A. E. Anspach in a manuscript in Valencia.Footnote 114 In 1949 Bernhard Blumenkranz recognized another copy of it in Rawlinson codex A 368 at the Bodleian Library along with a similar treatise against the Jews drawn from Augustinian quotations apparently by the same unknown author.Footnote 115 Diethard Aschoff prepared the critical edition of CP for Corpus Christianorum in 1975, and edited the corresponding Contra Judaeos in 2009.Footnote 116 Scholars have ranged in their estimates for its date from as early as the sixth century (even associating it with the age and environment in which Eugippius worked)Footnote 117 to as late as the twelfth century.Footnote 118 At present the earlier date for composition is commonly held,Footnote 119 though the stemma proposed by Aschoff marks a divide around 1150 which gave rise to the two surviving fifteenth-century manuscripts.Footnote 120 Although it has been called a florilegium, Marcia Colish has pointed out that CP is actually far more than a mere anthology since the anonymous author integrates many sources outside of Augustine and often uses Augustine to mine the opinions of the philosophers he opposes.Footnote 121 Although the difficulty of distinguishing and identifying “mixed” florilegia which circulated around medieval universities is well known, familiarity with the content and design of this work could help manuscript researchers to identify more copies or fragments of CP in the future.Footnote 122
The pattern of this common variant suggests a scenario of transmission between early Franciscan masters and students beginning with Alexander's use of CP passed to Bonaventure, and subsequently to Matthew of Aquasparta.Footnote 123 The latter's reception could be facilitated by personal contact with Bonaventure as a master, or from Matthew's own especially attentive readings of the Summa Halensis. The identification of the source for this common variant among early Franciscans offers a view into an important mediated Augustinian reception. The shared variant between these three Franciscans supports identifying Contra philosophos as a likely point of transmission of DCD 11.10 for Bonaventure.
Bonaventure's possible familiarity with Contra philosophos from within Franciscan circles may also correspond to his knowledge and esteem for the short mystical treatise DCD 11.2. Only twenty-two lines further down from the citation of DCD 11.10 Augustine makes a lengthy response to Plato based on twenty-five lines from DCD 11.2.Footnote 124 The long fragment is composed of two block quotations, the first one runs from magnum et admodum rarum to non fecit nisi ipse (DCD 11.2, lines 1–5); and the second one picks up at sed quia ipsa mens and concludes with hic est enim mediator Dei et hominum, homo Christius Iesus (DCD 11.2, lines 21–30). At this juncture of the fifth disputatio the author of CP has taken Augustine's description of Origen's position referred to as “those believe with us” from DCD 11.23 (lines 2–4), and put it into Plato's mouth who adopts the phrase as “we believe with you.”Footnote 125 Augustine then responds to Plato (and Origen) by pronouncing the long excerpt from DCD 11.2: Magnum est et admodum rarum.Footnote 126 Augustine's incipit to 11.23 (sed multo est mirandum amplius) expresses his wonder that so learned a thinker as Origen could have erred concerning the goodness of creation. The author of CP has applied this same amazement to the failure of Plato to grasp this truth. The passage of DCD 11.2 describing a “great and rather unusual” mystical experience proposes an alternative path for contemplation which leads to truth about God. Contra philosophos develops a marked contrast between the heights of mystical contemplation and mere philosophical searching. This interpretation of DCD 11.2 corresponds closely to the objectives of the Itinerarium and the tension among early Franciscans between the role of formal study and fidelity to their charism according to Saint Francis.
The Franciscan Matthew of Aquasparta also includes a long passage of DCD 11.2 in his Quaestiones disputatae de fide which matches exactly the second part of the fragment in CP 5.Footnote 127 He identifies it as coming from DCD 11, though he mistakenly cites it as the third chapter not the second. Despite the potential limits to their contact with the complete text of DCD, additional evidence from Alexander of Hales implies that his reading of DCD 11.2 extended beyond CP. In the Summa Halensis (hereafter SH), Alexander of Hales cites in full a passage of DCD 11.2 which picks up where the anonymous compiler ends (lines 30–32).Footnote 128 Even if new research confirms that this portion of the text belongs to the posthumous publications appended by Alexander's continuers, the presence of DCD 11.2 in the SH and beyond CP affirms that early Franciscans employed this chapter of Augustine for their own work. The overlap between CP and Bonaventure's use of DCD 11.10 in early works like Quaestiones disputatae de mysterio Trinitatis and De scientia Christi also suggests contact with CP disputatio 5 as a useful anthology and interpretive lens.
Alexander of Hales could have brought DCD 11.2 to Bonaventure's attention since he employs it concerning the question on the manner by which Christ is Mediator.Footnote 129 After stating the question, the third book of the SH names Augustine's DCD 11 as its source and then begins a lengthy citation starting from the key passage common to CP and to the examples given above: “hic est enim mediator Dei et hominum, homo Christius Iesus.”Footnote 130 The quotation continues for the remainder of DCD 11.2 demonstrating that Christ as truly God and truly Man is the only sure way by which hope is found and which is safe against all errors.Footnote 131 Alexander then adds his own commentary that Christ is mediator by means of his humanity united to the divinity, the divine person and the human nature. Disputatio 5 of CP is largely dedicated to the question of Christ as mediator. Analyzing this text and how it makes use of Augustine could reveal more common variants found in the writings of Alexander of Hales and inform our understanding of his Augustinian reception. This future work would also develop scholarly understanding of CP, a text which still “has not yet been properly appreciated.”Footnote 132
Contextualizing Bonaventure's use of DCD allows us to gain new insights into how the mystical treatise DCD 11.2 functioned among early Franciscans. Alexander of Hales uses DCD 11.2 as he treats the humanity of Christ at the center of his mission as mediator between mankind and God. In Francis's vision of Christ on the cross surrounded by the six wings of the seraph, the humanity of Christ also provides the structural center. The overall design of Bonaventure's De scientia Christi forms a 3-1-3 structure in which the humanity of Christ forms the center of the seven-part work.Footnote 133 Chapter four features the question on human knowledge through the lens of the incarnate Christ at the center. Just as the humanity of Christ as mediator gives structure to Bonaventure's De scientia Christi, and it appears to do so in the Itinerarium as well through Francis's conformity to the Crucified flanked by three chapters on each side — like the six wings of the seraph. Thus, while the Incarnation stands at the center of all Christian theology, and it marks the Franciscan charism and theological tradition as a particular focus.
Current Thinking on the Franciscan Intellectual Tradition
Examining the language and themes of DCD 11.2 in the Itinerarium provides an excellent opportunity to articulate the conceptual, theological, and historical conditions of Bonaventure's reception of Augustine and to modify a thesis put forward by Lydia Schumacher. Her research posits that Augustine served as a helpful and necessary foil for the first generations of Franciscan scholars, but not as a true influence or guide.Footnote 134 Bonaventure and others were justified in merely paying lip-service to Augustine because their innovative theology met with unsurmountable resistance within the hardened method and unbending demands of Parisian scholastics.Footnote 135 This thesis offers a new lens for Franciscan studies by asserting that Bonaventure's use of Augustine does not constitute reception and development as has been previously believed by scholars until now.Footnote 136 Schumacher's studies of Augustine's thought in the Itinerarium contributed to forming this interpretation.Footnote 137 Though Bonaventure consistently makes use of Augustinian phraseology, the new approach calls for an adjusted hermeneutic which identifies Franciscan positions at odds with Augustine to prove that his name and his texts are employed only to gain academic legitimacy.Footnote 138 The thesis has also been applied to the wider field of early Franciscan theology and integrated into several new publications focused on Alexander of Hales in particular.Footnote 139
My present research on DCD 11.2 in the making of the Itinerarium offers a new opportunity to consider this thesis in view of a previously unrecognized point of Augustinian reception in Bonaventure. The Itinerarium is especially apropos for considering Schumacher's interpretation since scholars all concur that it is Bonaventure's most original work, beyond any fixed medieval category or genre.Footnote 140 It does not constitute a commentary or postil on any pre-existing work, and it was composed outside the scholastic university setting. According to the current thesis we would expect to find one of two things: (1) either that Bonaventure would not employ Augustine in the Itinerarium at all since he now writes to his friars and lay readers beyond the academy; or (2) that if he did still choose to use Augustine for secondary ulterior motives, he would be very explicit about invoking this authority in order to benefit from it while promoting his own alternative ideas. To the contrary, however, the texts of the Itinerarium, De scientia Christi, and Omnium artifex demonstrate how Bonaventure integrated thematic and linguistic allusions from Augustine DCD 11 in an organic way by interweaving them into his own creative undertaking. The research presented in this article shows that Augustine does not serve simply as an authority employed defensively, but instead as a true magister for Bonaventure, one who has shaped his own most creative thought and Franciscan intellectual training from the inside out.
Wider Implications of This Study
The argument for an alternative reading of a “Franciscan Augustine” in the thought of Bonaventure relies on two things: a view of the scholastic method as a series of fixed allegiances which demand unwavering textual reiteration,Footnote 141 and the mistaken tendency of modern scholars to expect medieval citations of authorities to function according to their own critical contemporary standards.Footnote 142 I find compelling objections to each of these points which may in turn open the way for a modification of Schumacher's thesis.
Mary Carruthers has shown that the way in which “literature” is understood impacts directly how texts function in society and what kind of corresponding scholarship will develop.Footnote 143 When a tradition “understands words not as signs or clues but takes them as things in themselves,” then master and student alike are expected only to “rephrase the meaning of the written document,” to clear away the “detritus of history and linguistic change,” and to correct “inadvertent obscurities produced by history.”Footnote 144 Carruthers's description aligns closely with how Schumacher portrays the medieval scholastic method which Franciscan innovators were forced to confront.Footnote 145 However, such a hardened position towards text should also typically “deny legitimacy to interpretation,” and “ideally should produce no gloss or commentary.”Footnote 146
Alternatively, Carruthers explains that “textual communities” develop differently when they assume that words (verba) serve and convey realities (res) which have ontological primacy.Footnote 147 A social and rhetorical process develops around the language of stories, the dynamic role of memory, and a tradition of training in the “conventions of debate, and meditation, as well as oratory and poetry, are rhetorically conceived and fostered.”Footnote 148 Medieval training of the memoria found so prominently in the work of Hugh of St. Victor is oriented to the internal sphere where the words of others — as vehicles of ideas — interact with one's own words as an “interactive process.”Footnote 149 Appropriation of texts through trained memory constituted a standard and widespread scholastic method, one which fostered a capacity to relate seemingly disparate texts more easily.Footnote 150 Analogy and resemblance play a central role for Bonaventure's own creative thought.Footnote 151 The outlook of literature as signs, furthermore, is conducive not only to rhetoric itself, as Carruthers has concluded, but also to a flourishing of sacramental theology, consecrated life, and the visual arts in Christian circles. Schumacher's depiction of scholastic thinkers as promulgating and enforcing strict forms of textual adherence through repetition corresponds to a different tradition which understands words “as things in themselves.” When this view has predominated in Christian thought it is usually accompanied by iconoclastic tendencies and the rejection of consecrated life. The scholastic method used by intellectuals working in Paris in the thirteenth century, by contrast, combined common source texts integrated by memory, layers of past interpretation, and carefully crafted contemporary debate. The new movements of mendicant friars, Franciscans and Dominicans alike, also engaged actively in this method of collaborative teaching and learning.
Finally, the new thesis also rests on the view that modern scholars have long underestimated early Franciscan originality by assuming that scholastic thinkers cited authorities the way that they do, that is, in a straightforward manner. Instead, Schumacher proposes, early Franciscan creativity reveals itself by using Augustine's words while neglecting his actual ideas so as to circumvent the scholastic system. While I do not accept this portion of the argument, I agree with Schumacher that modern misconceptions about the scholastic method can hinder accurate understanding of medieval theology. In this way her work may be especially productive in the call for a new evaluation of the scholasticism by contemporary medievalists, even among scholars who do not share all of her current conclusions. Ultimately, Bonaventurean reception of Augustine poses particular demands for any modern scholar for the simple reason that as Philip L. Reynolds has noted so well, “he is incorrigibly medieval. It is difficult to regard him, as many regard Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, as a ghostly colleague in a modern department of philosophy.”Footnote 152
Conclusion
Only a few years after the end of his extensive scholarly career in Paris, Bonaventure goes to Mount LaVerna in 1259 to ponder “various ascents of the mind to God.” He comes to this moment with a rich interior library, heavily stocked with Augustine and prominently bookmarked on Book 11 of DCD. Bonaventure had already proven his explicit familiarity and esteem for DCD 11 in the inaugural sermon Omnium artifex (1254), De scientia Christi (1254), and “Letter to an Unknown Master” (1254/55). Now in conceiving of the Itinerarium mentis in Deum Bonaventure recasts all the key topics present in DCD 11: angels (the six-winged seraph), mystical ascents (Francis's stigmata), and Jesus Christ the mediator (to whom Francis conformed his humanity). This study has shown how the Itinerarium adopts language and structure common to DCD 11.2, sharing Augustine's specific uses of mens, via, and iter. Bonaventure expands on Augustine's treatment of Paul by adding Francis as his peer, showcasing them together as preeminent Christian mystics who used the progressive grades of knowledge to reach the heights of contemplation where God alone speaks to the soul.Footnote 153
The entire Itinerarium reflects Bonaventure's conviction that the intellectual and spiritual life must be seen holistically as one. If each human being is an imago Dei, then rejection of contemplation by the mens is rejection of human nature and of the means by which the God-man comes to souls. Bonaventure stands against any attempt to reduce the path to knowledge of the goodness of God through Christ the mediator, to a purely natural philosophical ascent to the simplicity of God. The same argument in CP 5 employs DCD 11.23 and DCD 11.2 to defend the Christian position — a text which his late teacher, Alexander of Hales, most likely pointed out with him. All of these historical factors taken together contribute to a portrait of Bonaventure reading DCD 11.2 as an apt refutation of merely secular philosophy and an eloquent tribute to contemplative mysticism through Christ the mediator.
Finally, the view of Bonaventure sincerely pondering with Augustine does not detract from his brilliance or underestimate the innovative contribution of the Itinerarium, but it may elucidate important dimensions of the approach to study found among early Franciscan theologians. Indeed Bonaventure reveals scholarly pursuits as an authentic imitation of Francis who “is set forth as an example of perfect contemplation, just as he previously had been of action, like a second Jacob-Israel.”Footnote 154 The impact of recognizing CP and DCD 11 as Augustinian sources for Franciscan theology, spirituality, and angelology awaits further research. But we may here begin that path by adding DCD 11.2 to the influences which accompanied Bonaventure as he charted the Itinerarium from the six-winged seraph and Francis's stigmata to the mind's journey to God through the incarnate Word, true God and true man.
Appendix I
De Civitate Dei 11.2: Complete Latin Text and English Translation.
Sancti Aurelii Augustini, De Civitate Dei, Libri XI–XXII, ed. Bernard Dombart and Alphonse Kalb, CCL 48 (Turnhout, 1989), 322, lines 1–36.
[1] magnum est et admodum rarum universam creaturam corpoream et incorpoream consideratam compertamque mutabilem intentione mentis excedere atque ad incommutabilem Dei substantiam pervenire et illic discere ex ipso, quod cunctam [5] naturam, quae non est quod ipse, non fecit nisi ipse. sic enim deus cum homine non per aliquam creaturam loquitur corporalem, corporalibus instrepens auribus, ut inter sonantem et audientem aeria spatia verberentur, neque per eius modi spiritalem, quae corporum similitudinibus figuratur, [10] sicut in somnis vel quo alio tali modo (nam et sic velut corporis auribus loquitur, quia velut per corpus loquitur et velut interposito corporalium locorum intervallo; multum enim similia sunt talia visa corporibus); sed loquitur ipsa veritate si quis sit idoneus ad audiendum mente, non corpore.
ad illud [15] enim hominis ita loquitur, quod in homine ceteris, quibus homo constat, est melius, et quo ipse Deus solus est melior. Cum enim homo rectissime intellegatur vel, si hoc non potest, saltem credatur factus ad imaginem Dei: profecto ea sui parte est propinquior superiori Deo, qua superat inferiores suas, [20] quas etiam cum pecoribus communes habet. sed quia ipsa mens, cui ratio et intellegentia naturaliter inest, vitiis quibusdam tenebrosis et veteribus invalida est, non solum ad inhaerendum fruendo, verum etiam ad perferendum incommutabile lumen, donec de die in diem renovata atque sanata fiat [25] tantae felicitatis capax, fide primum fuerat inbuenda atque purganda.
in qua ut fidentius ambularet ad veritatem, ipsa veritas, Deus Dei filius, homine adsumpto, non Deo consumpto, eandem constituit et fundavit fidem, ut ad hominis Deum iter esset homini per hominem Deum. hic est enim mediator [30] Dei et hominum, homo Christus Iesus. per hoc enim mediator, per quod homo, per hoc et uia. quoniam si inter eum qui tendit et illud quo tendit via media est, spes est perveniendi; si autem desit aut ignoretur qua eundum sit, quid prodest nosse quo eundum sit? sola est autem adversus omnes errores [35] via munitissima, ut idem ipse sit Deus et homo; quo itur Deus, qua itur homo.
The City of God (De Civitate Dei) XI–XXII, trans. William Babcock, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, ed. Boniface Ramsey (Hyde Park, NY, 2013), I/7:2–3.
It is a great and exceedingly rare thing for a person, after he has considered the whole corporeal and incorporeal creation and found it mutable, to go beyond it by sheer concentration of mind and arrive at the immutable substance of God, there to learn from God himself that all nature that is not what God himself is was, in fact, made by none other than God. For in this case God does not speak with a person through any corporeal means, making sounds for bodily ears in such a way that there is a vibration in the airy spaces between the speaker and the hearer, nor does he [p. 3] speak through some spiritual means which is represented by bodily images, as happens in dreams or anything else of the sort (for even in this instance he speaks as though for the ears of the body, due to the fact that he speaks through a body and as though across an intervening interval of bodily space, for such visions are very like bodies). Rather he speaks by means of the truth itself, if anyone is capable of hearing him with the mind instead of the body.
For here he speaks to that part of man which is better than everything else of which a man consists and than which only God himself is better. For, since man is most rightly understood — or, if this is not possible, at least more rightly believed — to be made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26), he undoubtedly stands nearer to God, above him, by virtue of that part of him by which he himself surpasses those lower parts which he has in common with the beasts. But because the mind itself, by nature the seat of reason and intelligence, is enfeebled by the dark and inveterate faults and is unable not only to cling to and enjoy but even to endure God's immutable light, until it has been renewed from day to day, and healed, and made capable of such happiness, it had first to be trained and cleansed by faith.
And in order that, by faith, the mind might walk more confidently towards the truth, the truth itself, God, the Son of God, having assumed humanity without ceasing to be God, established and founded this same faith, so that man might have a path to man's God through the man who was God. For this is the mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim. 2:5). For it is as man that he is mediator, and it is as man, too, that is the way (John 14:6). If there is a way between one who strives and that toward which he strives, there is hope of reaching the goal [arriving], but if there is no way, or if that way is not known, what use is it to know the goal? And there is only one way that is fully proof against all errors, in that he is himself both God and man: the goal is God, the way as man.
Appendix II
Summary of the Structure of De Civitate Dei, 11.2.
1) Stages in the Mystical Experience of a Few
a) after having considered all corporeal and incorporeal creatures “in his speculation” (intentione mentis), and finding them mutable
i) he “arrives” (pervenire) at the immutable substance of God (ad incommutabilem dei substantiam)
(1) once “there” (illic) he learns from God himself that whatever nature which is not God himself, was not made except by Him (quod cunctam naturam, quae non est quod ipse, non fecit nisi ipse).
(2) concerning the nature of this way of God speaking with a man
(a) distinguished from natural hearing or hearing with images or figures as in dreams or visions which are likened to natural senses.
(b) instead “he speaks direct by the direct impact of truth itself” (loquitur ipsa veritate).
(c) under the condition that the listener is “capable” or “fit” (si quis sit idoneus) to listen “by the mind not by the body” (ad audiendum mente, non corpore).
2) Description of the “mind” (mens) in relation to the image of God, the realities of fallen state of humanity, and the Training needed to prepare for an ascent to God
a) mens, the best part of man as made in the image of God
i) God speaks to the best (melius) of all that constitutes man, having
only God himself as being higher (quo ipse deus solus est melior)
ii) for man is “made in the image of God” (factus ad imaginem dei) which can be “rightly understood” (rectissime intellegatur), or if one cannot understand, at least it can be believed (saltem credatur).
b) mens, the best part of man in relation to lower parts of his nature
i) the part that is closer to God (propinquior superiori deo)
ii) the part that “rises superior” (superat) to the lower parts (inferiores
suas) which are common with “brute creation” (cum pecoribus).
iii) it is called the “mind” (mens)
(1) the “mind” (mens) as positive natural faculty: the mind in which is found “the natural seat of reason and understanding” (cui ratio et intellegentia naturaliter inest)
(2) the “mind” (mens) as negative limited wounded condition: “weakened by long-standing faults which darken it” (vitiis quibusdam tenebrosis et veteribus invalida est)
(a) the state of being unable to “to cleave to that changeless light and to enjoy it; it is too weak even to endure that light” (non solum ad inhaerendum fruendo, verum etiam ad perferendum incommutabile lumen)
(b) the healing solution needed:
(i) “to be renewed and healed day after day” (donec de die in diem renovata atque sanata)
(ii) “so as to become capable of such felicity” (fiat tantae felicitatis
capax)
(iii) “first being trained and purified by faith (fide primum fuerat inbuenda atque purganda)
3) The Journey and the Way: The Humanity of Christ as the Road for the Mind to God
a) man is walking towards truth (ambularet ad veritatem)
i) to do so with “greater confidence” (fidentius)
(1) Truth himself (ipsa veritas)
(a) God the Son of God (deus dei filius)
(b) “took manhood” (homine adsumpto)
(c) “without abandoning his godhead (non deo consumpto)
(2) “established and founded this faith” (eandem constituit et fundavit fidem)
ii) “so that man might have a path (iter) to man's God (ad hominis deum) through the man who was God” (per hominem deum); this is the man Jesus Christ (quotes 1 Tim. 2:5)
b) “as man he is our mediator” (per hoc enim mediator); “as man he is our way” (per quod homo, per hoc et via).
c) the traveler
i) The hope to arrive at the end (spes est perveniendi) if there is a road and one possesses it (qui tendit et illud quo tendit via media est)
ii) The futility of knowing there is an end (si autem desit aut ignoretur qua eundum sit) if there is no knowledge of how to get there (quid prodest nosse quo eundum sit)
d) the one road (sola est . . . via)
i) most secure way (munitissima)
ii) against all errors (adversus omnes errores)
iii) one is who is himself god and man (idem ipse sit deus et homo)
(1) “as God, he is the journey's [goal]” (quo itur deus)
(2) “as man, he is the journey's [path]” (qua itur homo)
