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The Trinitarians, formally known as the Order of the Most Holy Trinity and of the Captives (Latin: Ordo Sanctissimae Trinitatis et Captivorum; abbreviated OSsT), is a mendicant order of the Catholic Church for men founded in Cerfroid, outside Paris, in the Late-12th-Century.
In addition to its purpose of ransoming Christian captives, a special dedication to the mystery of the Holy Trinity has been a constitutive element of the Order’s life from the very outset.
Papal documents refer to the Founder only as “Brother John”, but Tradition identifies him as John of Matha, whose Feast Day is Celebrated on 17 December.
The founding-intention for the Order was the ransom of Christians held captive by Muslims, a consequence of Crusading and of piracy along the Mediterranean coast of Europe.[2]
Saint Bonaventure was born in Tuscany, Italy, in 1221. He entered The Franciscan Order, in consequence of a miraculous cure due to the Intercession of Saint Francis of Assisi.
His Master was Alexander of Hales, who used to say of his Virginal Disciple that one would have thought him preserved from Original Sin.
He was a Doctor of The Church at thirty years of age (Collect) and taught at The University of Paris at the same time as Saint Thomas Aquinas, to whom he was closely united. He was awarded the Title of Seraphic Doctor.
Appointed General of his Order, and, later, a Cardinal of The Church (Communion, Alleluia), he died in 1274 during The General Council of Lyons, where Greeks and Latins vied in admiring his zeal and clear-mindedness, which made him The Light of Faith.
He was born at Bagnoregio, in Latium, Italy, not far from Viterbo, then part of The Papal States. Almost nothing is known of his childhood, other than the names of his parents, Giovanni di Fidanza and Maria Ritella.
Unfortunately, for Bonaventure, a dispute between Seculars and Mendicants delayed his reception as Master until 1257, where his Degree was taken in company with Thomas Aquinas.
Three years earlier, his fame had earned him the position of Lecturer on The Four Books of Sentences — a Book of Theology written by Peter Lombard in the 12th-Century — and in 1255 he received the Degree of Master, the Mediæval equivalent of Doctor.
After having successfully defended his Order against the reproaches of the Anti-Mendicant Party, he was elected Minister General of The Franciscan Order. On 24 November 1265, he was selected for the Post of Archbishop of York; however, he was never Consecrated and resigned the Appointment in October 1266.
During his tenure, the General Chapter of Narbonne, held in 1260, promulgated a Decree prohibiting the publication of any work, out of The Order, without permission from the higher Superiors. This prohibition has induced modern writers to pass severe judgement upon Roger Bacon’s Superiors being envious of Bacon’s abilities. However, the prohibition, enjoined on Bacon, was a general one, which extended to the whole Order.
Its promulgation was not directed against him, but rather against Gerard of Borgo San Donnino. Gerard had published, in 1254, without permission, a Heretical work “Introductorius in Evangelium æternum”. Thereupon, the General Chapter of Narbonne promulgated the above-mentioned Decree, identical with the “constitutio gravis in contrarium” that Bacon speaks of. The above-mentioned prohibition was rescinded in Roger’s favour, unexpectedly, in 1266.
Bonaventure was instrumental in procuring the Election of Pope Gregory X, who rewarded him with the Title of Cardinal Bishop of Albano, and insisted on his presence at the great Second Council of Lyon in 1274. There, after his significant contributions led to a union of the Greek and Latin Churches, Bonaventure died suddenly and in suspicious circumstances.
The Catholic Encyclopedia has citations which suggest he was poisoned. The only extant Relic of the Saint is the arm and hand with which he wrote his “Commentary on The Sentences”, which is now conserved at Bagnoregio, Italy, in the Parish Church of Saint Nicholas.
He steered the Franciscans on a moderate and intellectual course, that made them the most prominent Order in The Catholic Church until the coming of the Jesuits. His Theology was marked by an attempt completely to integrate Faith and Reason. He thought of Christ as the “One True Master”, who offers humans knowledge that begins in Faith, is developed through rational understanding, and is perfected by mystical union with God.
English: Statue of Saint Bonaventure, Woerden, Netherlands.
Bonaventure’s Feast Day was included in the General Roman Calendar, immediately upon his Canonisation in 1482. It was at first Celebrated on the Second Sunday in July, but was moved, in 1568, to 14 July, since 15 July, the Anniversary of his death, was at that time taken up with the Feast of Saint Henry.
Bonaventure was formally Canonised, in 1484, by the Franciscan Pope Sixtus IV, and ranked along with Thomas Aquinas as the greatest of the Doctors of The Church by another Franciscan, Pope Sixtus V, in 1587. Bonaventure was regarded as one of the greatest Philosophers of The Middle Ages.
His works, as arranged in the most recent Critical Edition by the Quaracchi Fathers (Collegio S. Bonaventura), consist of a “Commentary on The Sentences of Lombard”, in four volumes, and eight other volumes, among which are a “Commentary on the Gospel of Saint Luke” and a number of smaller works; the most famous of which are “Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, Breviloquium, De Reductione Artium ad Theologiam, Soliloquium”, and “De septem itineribus æternitatis”, in which most of what is individual in his teaching is contained.
For Saint Isabelle of France, the sister of King Saint Louis IX of France, and her Monastery of Poor Clares, at Longchamps, France, Saint Bonaventure wrote the Treatise “Concerning the Perfection of Life”.
English: Stained-Glass Windows of the Cathedral
Santa Ana, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Left to Right: Saint Martial of Limoges; Saint Peter of Verona; Mary with Jesus; Saint Anna and Mary; Saint Bonaventure.
Deutsch: Die figürlichen Fenster der Kathedrale Santa Ana, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Von links nach rechts: Heiliger Martial von Limoges; Heiliger Petrus von Verona, auch genannt Petrus Martyr; Maria mit Jesus; Heilige Anna und Maria; Heiliger Bonaventura.
Français: Vitraux de la cathédrale de Santa Ana,
à Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, dans les Canaries.
De gauche à droite : Saint Martial de Limoges, Saint
Pierre de Vérone (ou Saint Pierre le Martyr),
Marie et Jésus, Marie et Saint Anne, Saint Bonaventure.
Photo: 5 October 2011.
Source: Own work.
Author: H. Zell.
(Wikimedia Commons)
The “Commentary on The Sentences” remains, without doubt, Bonaventure’s greatest work; all his other writings are in some way subservient to it. It was written “superiorum præcepto” (at the command of his Superiors) when he was only twenty-seven and is a Theological achievement of the First Rank.
Bonaventure wrote on almost every subject treated by the Schoolmen, and his writings are very numerous. The greater number of them deal with Philosophy and Theology. No work of Bonaventure’s is exclusively Philosophical and bears striking witness to the mutual interpenetration of Philosophy and Theology, which is a distinguishing mark of the Scholastic period.
Much of Saint Bonaventure’s Philosophical thought shows a considerable influence by Saint Augustine. So much so, that De Wulf considers him the best representative of Augustinianism. Saint Bonaventure adds Aristotelian principles to the Augustinian Doctrine, especially in connection with the illumination of the intellect, according to Gilson.
Saint Augustine, who had imported into The West many of the Doctrines that would define scholastic Philosophy, was an incredibly important source of Bonaventure’s Platonism. The Mystic, Dionysius the Areopagite, was another notable influence.
In Philosophy, Bonaventure presents a marked contrast to his contemporaries, Roger Bacon and Thomas Aquinas. While these may be taken as representing, respectively, physical science yet in its infancy, and Aristotelian scholasticism in its most perfect form, he presents the mystical and Platonising mode of speculation, which had already, to some extent, found expression in Hugo and Richard of Saint Victor, and in Bernard of Clairvaux.
To him, the purely intellectual element, though never absent, is of inferior interest, when compared with the living power of the affections or the heart.
Stained-Glass Windows:
Saint Bonaventure (Left) and Saint Thomas Aquinas (Right), Saint Bonaventure Church, Raeville, Nebraska.
Like Thomas Aquinas, with whom he shared numerous profound agreements in Matters Theological and Philosophical, he combated the Aristotelian notion of the eternity of the world, vigorously. Bonaventure accepts the Platonic Doctrine that ideas do not exist “in rerum natura”, but as ideals exemplified by The Divine Being, according to which actual things were formed; and this conception has no slight influence upon his Philosophy.
Due to this Philosophy, Physicist and Philosopher Max Bernhard Weinstein contended that Saint Bonaventure showed strong pandeistic inclinations. Like all the great scholastic Doctors, Saint Bonaventure starts with the discussion of the relations between Reason and Faith. All the sciences are but the handmaids of Theology; Reason can discover some of the moral truths which form the groundwork of the Christian system, but others it can only receive and apprehend through Divine illumination.
To obtain this illumination, the Soul must employ the proper means, which are Prayer, the exercise of the Virtues, whereby it is rendered fit to accept the Divine Light, and Meditation, which may rise even to ecstatic union with God. The supreme end of life is such union, union in contemplation or intellect and in intense absorbing Love; but it cannot be entirely reached in this life, and remains as a Hope for the future.
A master of the memorable phrase, Bonaventure held that Philosophy opens the mind to at least three different routes that humans can take on their journey to God:
Non-intellectual material creatures he conceived as shadows and vestiges (literally, footprints) of God, understood as the ultimate cause of a World that Philosophical Reason can prove was created at a first moment in time;
Intellectual creatures he conceived of as Images and Likenesses of God, the workings of the Human Mind and Will, leading us to God, understood as Illuminator of Knowledge and Donor of Grace and Virtue;
The final route to God is the route of being, in which Bonaventure brought Saint Anselm’s argument, together with Aristotelian and Neoplatonicmetaphysics, to view God as the Absolutely Perfect Being, whose essence entails its existence, an Absolutely Simple Being that causes all other, composite beings to exist.
Bonaventure, however, is not merely a meditative thinker, whose works may form good manuals of devotion; he is a Dogmatic Theologian of High Rank, and, on all the disputed questions of scholastic thought, such as universals, matter, the principle of individualism, or the “intellectus agens”, he gives weighty and well-reasoned decisions.
English: Church of Saint Bonaventure, Munich, Germany.
Deutsch: Starnberg, OT Percha, Harkirchener
Straße 7. Altenheim St. Josef mit der integrierten Kirche
St. Bonaventura. Eine Münchnerin überlies 1895 als Dank
für die Pflege eines Angehörigen ihre beiden Landhäuser in Percha den Ursberger Pflegeanstalten.
He agrees with Saint Albert the Great in regarding Theology as a practical science; its truths, according to his view, are peculiarly adapted to influence the affections. He discusses very carefully the nature and meaning of The Divine Attributes; considers universals to be the ideal forms pre-existing in The Divine Mind, according to which things were shaped; holds matter to be pure potentiality, which receives individual being and determinate-ness from the formative Power of God, acting according to the ideas; and, finally, maintains that the “intellectus agens” has no separate existence.
On these, and on many other points of scholastic Philosophy, the “Seraphic Doctor” exhibits a combination of subtlety and moderation, which makes his works particularly valuable.
In form and intent, the work of Saint Bonaventure is always the work of a Theologian; he writes as one for whom the only angle of vision and the proximate criterion of Truth is The Christian Faith. This fact influences his importance for the history of Philosophy; when coupled with his style, it makes Bonaventure perhaps the least accessible of the major figures of the 13th-Century.
This is true, not because he is a Theologian, but because Philosophy interests him largely as a “præparatio evangelica”, as something to be interpreted as a foreshadow of, or deviation from, what God has revealed.
In a way that is not true of Aquinas or Albert or Scotus, Bonaventure does not survive well the transition from his time to ours. It is difficult to imagine a contemporary Philosopher, Christian or not, citing a passage from Bonaventure to make a specifically Philosophical point.
One must know Philosophers to read Bonaventure, but the study of Bonaventure is seldom helpful for understanding Philosophers and their characteristic problems. Bonaventure, as a Theologian, is something else again, of course, as is Bonaventure the edifying author. It is in those areas, rather than in Philosophy proper, that his continuing importance must be sought.
Text from “The Liturgical Year”. By: Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B. Volume 13. Time After Pentecost. Book IV.
Four months after “The Angel of The Schools” [Editor: Saint Thomas Aquinas. Feast Day 7 March], “The Seraphic Doctor” appears in the heavens. Bound by the ties of love when on Earth, the two are now united for ever before The Throne of God.
Bonaventure's own words will show us how great a right they both had to The Heavenly Titles bestowed upon them by the admiring gratitude of men.
As there are three hierarchies of Angels in Heaven, so, on Earth, there are three classes of The Elect. The Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones, who form the first hierarchy, represent those who approach nearest to God by contemplation, and who differ among themselves according to the intensity of their love, the plenitude of their science, and the steadfastness of their justice; to The Dominations, Virtues, and Powers, correspond the Prelates and Princes; and, lastly, the lowest Choirs signify the various Ranks of The Faithful engaged in the active life.
This is the triple division of men, which, according to Saint Luke, will be made at the last day: Two shall be in the bed, two in the field, two at the mill; that is to say, in the repose of Divine Delights, in the field of government, at the mill of this life's toil.
As regards the two mentioned in each place, we may remark that, in Isaias, The Seraphim, who are more closely united to God than the rest, perform two by two their ministry of sacrifice and praise; for it is with the Angel as with man; the fulness of love, which belongs especially to The Seraphim, cannot be without the fulfilment of the double precept of Charity towards God and one's neighbour.
Again, Our Lord sent His Disciples two and two before His Face; and, in Genesis, we find God sending two Angels where one would have sufficed. It is better, therefore, says Ecclesiastes, that two should be together than one; for they have the advantage of their society.
Such is the teaching of Bonaventure in his book on The Hierarchy, wherein he shows us the secret workings of Eternal Wisdom for the salvation of the World and sanctification of The Elect.
It would be impossible to understand aright the history of the 13th-Century were we to forget the prophetic vision, wherein Our Lady was seen presenting to her offended Son His two servants, Dominic and Francis, that they might, by their powerful union, bring back to Him the wandering human race.
What a spectacle for Angels when, on the morrow of the apparition, the two Saints met and embraced: “Thou art my companion, we will run side by side,” said the descendant of the Guzmans to the poor man of Assisi; “let us keep together, and no man will be able to prevail against us.”. These words might well have been the motto of their noble sons, Thomas and Bonaventure.
The Star, which shone over the head of Saint Dominic, shed its bright rays on Saint Thomas; The Seraphic who imprinted the stigmata in the flesh of Saint Francis touched with his fiery wing the Soul of Saint Bonaventure; yet both, like their incomparable fathers, had but one end in view: To draw men by science and love to that Eternal Life which consists in knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ Whom He has sent.
The remainder of this Article on Saint Bonaventure can be read in full in “The Liturgical Year”, by Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B. Available from Silverstream Priory HERE
Text from Wikipedia — the free encyclopædia, unless stated otherwise.
Vigils.
In the Tridentine Calendar, the Vigils of Christmas, Epiphany, and Pentecost, were called “Major Vigils”; the rest were “Minor Vigils” or “Common Vigils”.
In earlier times, every Feast Day had a Vigil, but the increase in the number of Feast Days, and abuses connected with the Evening and Night Service, of which the Vigils originally consisted, led to their being diminished.
If a Vigil fell on a Sunday, it was transferred to the previous Saturday, although the Vigil of Christmas took precedence over the Fourth Sunday of Advent.
Prior to the suppression of some Vigils by Pope Pius XII in 1955, there were three Classes of Vigils:
The Vigils of Christmas and Pentecost were of the First-Class, and took precedence over any Feast Day;
The Vigil of Epiphany was of the Second-Class, and permitted only Doubles of the First-Class or Second-Class, or any Feast of the Lord;
All other Vigils were “Common” and took precedence only over Ferias and Simple Feast Days, but were “Anticipated” on Saturday if they fell on Sunday.
Most Feasts of the Apostles had Vigils; the exceptions being those which fell in Eastertide, when Vigils were not permitted.
The Vigil of Saint Matthias was unique, in that it was normally Commemorated on 23 February, the Feast Day of Saint Peter Damian, but, in Leap Year, was kept on 24 February, the Traditional Leap Day of the Roman Calendar.
Octaves.
The Tridentine Calendar had many Octaves, without any indication in the Calendar of distinction of rank between them, apart from the fact that the Octave Day (the final day of the Octave) was ranked higher than the days within the Octave.
To cut down on the repetition of the same Prayers in Mass and Office every day for eight days, Pope Saint Pius X classified the Octaves as “Privileged”, “Common” or “Simple”.
The Privileged Octaves were of three “Ranks”:
The First Rank of Privileged Octaves belonged to Easter and Pentecost (permitting no Feast Day to be Celebrated during them, nor even to be Commemorated until Vespers on Tuesday);
The Second Rank of Privileged Octaves belonged to Epiphany and Corpus Christi (the Octave Day ranked as a Greater Double, the days within the Octave as Semi-Doubles, giving way only to Doubles of the First-Class, and on the Octave Day only to a Double of the First-Class, which was Celebrated in the entire Church);
The Third Rank of Privileged Octaves belonged to Christmas, the Ascension, and the Sacred Heart (these gave way to any Feast Day above the level of Simple).
The Common Octaves were those of the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, the Solemnity of Saint Joseph, Saints Peter and Paul, and All Saints, as well as, locally, the principal Patron Saint of a Church, Cathedral, Order, Town, Diocese, Province, or Nation.
These, too, gave way to any Feast Day above the level of Simple; the difference between these and the Third Privileged Rank was that Ferial Psalms were said during Common Octaves, while the Psalms from the Feast Day were used during Privileged Octaves.
These were all Doubles of the Second-Class, their Octave Day was Simple, and, in contrast to the situation before Pope Saint Pius X, their Mass was not repeated, nor a Commemoration made, except on the Octave Day, as Simple Octaves had no days within the Octave.
In Pope Pius XII’s reform, only the Octaves of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost were kept.
The days within the Easter and Pentecost Octaves were raised to Double Rite, had precedence over all Feast Days, and did not admit Commemorations.
In Leap Year, the month of February is of 29 days, and the Feast of St. Matthias is celebrated on the 25th day and the Feast of St. Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows on the 28th day of February, and twice is said Sexto Kalendas, that is on the 24th and 25th; and the Dominical Letter, which was taken up in the month of January, is changed to the preceding; that, if in January, the Dominical Letter was A, it is changed to the preceding, which is g, etc.; and the letter f is kept twice, on the 24th and 25th.
Wednesday within The Second Week after The Octave of Easter: Solemnity of St. Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Confessor, and Patron of the Universal Church, Double of the First-Class with a Common Octave.
Wednesday within The Third Week after The Octave of Easter: Octave of St. Joseph, Greater Double.
May.
May 1: Ss. Philip and James Apostles, Double of the Second-Class.
