The Bonaventurian School

Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas became masters of theology at Paris in the same year, 1257. That year Bonaventure was elected minister general of the Franciscans, and he governed the order for seventeen years. His theology is Augustine's: all things come from God, bear his image, and lead the mind back to him. The Itinerarium mentis in Deum traces that road in a few pages; the Breviloquium sets out the whole of doctrine on it.

His students made the first Franciscan school. John Pecham disputed with Thomas at Paris and, as Archbishop of Canterbury, renewed the Oxford condemnation of Thomas's single substantial form; Matthew of Aquasparta defended Augustine's divine illumination. Within a generation Scotus had taken their place in the Franciscan schools.

Sixtus V, himself a Franciscan, made him a Doctor of the Church in 1588 and had his works printed at the Vatican. While most Franciscan schools taught Scotus, the Capuchins made Bonaventure their master. Trigoso gathered a Summa from his writings; Bonaventure of Langres printed his positions and Thomas's side by side on the same page; Gaudenzio of Brescia died preaching in Lent 1672, and his students assembled his course in seven volumes; Barbieri taught young friars from his own courses ad mentem S. Bonaventurae for fifty years.

The Quaracchi edition (1882–1902) gave scholars a reliable text. Since then Bonaventure has had readers rather than a school: Gilson, whose study of 1924 made him a philosopher to argue with again, and Ratzinger, whose Habilitation read him on the theology of history.