Bonaventure’s theology is traditionally Augustinian.
He is willing to make use of whatever tools come to
hand, and to this end he was prepared to use Aristotle,
but he held no specifi cally “Aristotelian” opinions. As
well as Aristotle, his sources include Pseudo-Dionysius
the Areopagite’s Celestial Hierarchy, John Damascene,
Boethius, and mystical “moderns” like Richard of Saint-
Victor. For Bonaventure, theology was so far above
philosophy in purpose that there could be no diffi culty
deciding between faith and reason. This is not to say
that faith is irrational; in cases of apparent disagreement,
faith is clearly acting out of a different rationality. He
made careful distinction among the object of faith per se,
which is God, who can be known directly (the “believ-
able” or “credible” thing); the object of faith as known
through the authority of Scripture; and the object of faith
as investigated in theological inquiry. Theology’s task
is not superior to either revelation or Scripture, or un-
dermining of it, but is intended to cast a new light—that
of intelligibility—on the search for God.
Bonaventure, known as Doctor devotus and Doctor
seraphicus, saw the Son of God as the pattern for life on
earth, and his theology is particularly Trinitarian—in-
deed, he described many things in threes. For instance,
he developed a theology-spirituality of the triple way:
the purgative way, moved by the prick of conscience; the
illuminative way, moved by the light of the intellect; and
the unitive way, moved by the fl ame of wisdom.
The obviously devotional stance of Bonaventure’s
work has sometimes led to his being unfavorably com-
pared with Thomas Aquinas; the two are better seen as
complementary than as comparable.
See also Alexander of Hales; Francis of Assisi;
Hugues de Saint-Cher
Further Reading
Bonaventure. Opera omnia, ed. PP. Collegii a S. Bonaventura. 11
vols. in 28. Ad claras Aquas (Quaracchi): Typographia Colegii
S. Bonaventurae, 1882–1902.
——. Sermones dominicales, ed. Jacques-Guy Bougerol. Grot-
taferrata (Rome): Collegio S. Bonaventura, Padri Editori di
Quaracchi, 1977.
——. Saint Bonaventure’s Disputed Questions on the Mystery of
the Trinity, trans. Zachary Hayes. St. Bonaventure: Franciscan
Institute, St. Bonaventure University, 1979.
——. The Works of St. Bonaventure, trans. José de Vinck. 5 vols.
Paterson: St. Anthony Guild, 1960–70.
——.What Manner of Man? Sermons on Christ by St. Bonaven-
ture, trans. Zachary Hayes. Chicago: Franciscan Herald,
1974.
Bougerol, Jacques-Guy. Introduction à Saint Bonaventure. Paris:
Vrin. 1988.
——. Introduction to the Works of Bonaventure, trans. José de
Vinck. Paterson: St. Anthony Guild, 1964.
——. St. Bonaventure et la sagesse chrétienne. Paris: Seuil,
1963.
——. Lexique saint Bona venture. Paris: Éditions Franciscaines,
1969.
Chavero Blanco, Francisco de Asis, ed. Bonaventuriana: mis-
cellanea in onore di Jacques-Guy Bougerol. 2 vols. Rome:
Antonianum, 1988.
Cousins, Ewert H. Bonaventure and the Coincidence of Oppo-
sites. Chicago: Franciscan Herald, 1978.
S. Bonaventura 1274–1974. 5 vols. Grottaferrata (Rome): Col-
legio S. Bonaventura, 1973–74.
Hayes, Zachary. The Hidden Center: Spirituality and Speculative
Christology in St. Bonaventure. New York: Paulist, 1981.
Lesley J. SmithBONIFACE VIII, POPE
(c. 1235 or 1240–1303)
Pope Boniface VIII (Benedetto Caetani, sometimes
Gaetani, r. 1294–1303) was born in Anagni, a hill town
southeast of Rome that was his family’s ancestral home.
He is remembered as the last great monarch-pope, an
ambitious amasser of power and wealth. He asserted
the supremacy of papal authority in the power struggles
attending the advent of the European nation-states—
struggles in which he was an able player. However, he
was defeated in his clash with the French king Philip
IV (the Fair) and was tried posthumously. Often, it is
from the record of these posthumous proceedings that
historians and Boniface’s biographers have gleaned
details of his personal character; thus it is diffi cult to
know how seriously to take the charge that Boniface was
a heretic who openly denied the immortality of the soul
and the sanctity of the eucharist. He did surely use his
offi ce to increase the wealth of the church and did openly
declare that it was a logical impossibility for the pope
to be guilty of simony. Dante, for one, begged to differ
and proclaimed Boniface’s imminent arrival among the
simoniacs in Inferno 19.
The young Benedetto (Benedict) Caetani began his
legal education and his ecclesiastical career at Todi and
Spoleto in the 1260s; he gained valuable diplomatic
experience as a papal legate in France and England.
He was made a cardinal by Pope Martin IV in 1281.
The following year, the uprising known as the Sicilian
Vespers transferred control of Sicily from Charles I of
Anjou, king of Naples (a papal fi ef), to Pedro III of
Aragon. The struggle between Anjou and Aragon for
the control of Sicily was to plague Boniface’s entire
tenure as pope.
The precise circumstances that led to Cardinal Bene-
dict’s accession to the papacy as Boniface VIII remain
somewhat mysterious. After the death of Nicholas IV
in 1292, the Colonna and Orsini factions in the College
of Cardinals could not come to terms, and the conclave,
removed to Perugia from malarial Rome, dragged on
into the hot summer months of 1294. Benedict, who was
now in his sixties and was intermittently unwell, withBONAVENTURE, SAINT