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ABSTRACT
Complementary to all theological considerations of divine writing – sacra pagina – are those of divine reading, known in the Christian Tradition as lectio divina. Through a close reading of St. Bonaventure’s Incendium Amoris (De Triplici Via) this article seeks to elucidate the author’s understanding of the Christian’s act of reading, especially the reading of the biblical text. Between the eleventh and the late thirteenth centuries, the metaphysically rich sense of lectio regnant in the monastic environment goes into decline. In ascendancy is a lectio attenuated to a mere instrument, whether scholarly or spiritual in application. Standing somewhere near the apex of this watershed, Bonaventure understood the act of reading the Word of God as constitutive of a real, vital, personal relationship between the divine, living author and the human reader. Notwithstanding his scholastic contributions, Bonaventure remains essentially faithful to the understanding of lectio as practiced in a liturgically saturated monastic milieu.
KEYWORDS:
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Notes
1 ‘Upon acquaintance with these three things, therefore, depends the whole knowledge of Sacred Scripture as well as the reward of eternal life.’ Incendium Amoris (hereafter IA), Prologue. My translation.
2 That lectio divina occupied an important place in the life of any thirteenthth Century churchman ought to be an uncontroversial assertion. The point here is not that every cleric thought regularly or even consciously about the activity of ‘reading qua spiritual reading of the Scriptures,’ but rather that, to be a medieval Christian cleric, at all in good faith, entailed some minimal appropriation of the cultural legacy of praying in a Biblical mode. In this – entirely ordinary – understanding of lectio even attending Mass with a modicum of sincere devotion engaged one in the exercise of lectio divina. For all those religious who prayed the liturgical hours, especially in choir, such exercise was the more pronounced – again, regardless of whether the average monk or friar adverted consciously to what he was doing. By these lights, all monks of the Benedictine family – the Benedictines themselves, as well as the great reform foundations begun at Citeaux and Chartreuse, the Cistercians and Carthusians – not to mention the Augustinians, were regularly engaged, in however rudimentary a way, in the practice of lectio divina. The same can be said of the canons regular, like the Victorines, who lived under the Rule of St. Augustine, and even of the friars (Franciscans and Dominicans), so long as they remained faithful to the Mass and to some practice of the Liturgical Hours, however attenuated in certain cases. The additional claim, that lectio maintained an important place in Christian thought in the thirteenthth Century, might appear to warrant some textual support. Even here, however, in the case of all monks, as well as the canons under St. Augustine’s Rule, the labour of adducing specific proof-texts from Rievaulx or Citeaux or Cluny or St.-Victor is really time wasted: the western monastic tradition has never ceased to be steeped in the tradition of lectio divina, from St. Benedict himself and his antecedents to the present day. As for the friars, we may point to significant discussions of the theme by both Franciscans and Dominicans. So, for example, we find the topic taken up by the Franciscan David of Augsburg (d. 1272), in De exterioris et interioris hominis compositione (For the citation, see Jacques Rousse, et al, Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, v. 9, 488). The Dominican Humbert of Romans (d. 1277) also writes about the subject, under the slightly variant heading lectio sacra, in his Expositio regulae B. Augustini (again, see Rousse, Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, v. 9, 488–9). St. Thomas has a number of noteworthy citations, including three from the Summa Theologiae (IIa-IIae, 180, 3, objection 4 and its response, 186, 7, response to objection 2, and 188, 6, body), one from a Quodlibetal Question (7, 7, 2, objection 2), one from the Commentary on the Sentences (IV, 15, 4, 2a, response to objection 2), and one which refers to Hugh of St. Victor by name (Contra Impugnantes, 3, 4, body). Finally, St. Bonaventure’s own work is littered with references, including numerous occurrences in the Collationes in Hexaemeron (E.g. collation 4, par. 22, linea 13 and collation 4, par. 21, linea 25, which refers also to the lignum vitae. NB: these and the following references to Bonaventure’s works are from the Library of Latin Texts [Turnhout: Brepols, 2002].), as well as a key text from the Itinerarium mentis in Deum (Prologue, par. 4, linea 1).
3 Mario Masini coins the term ‘inverbation’ to distinguish the sense of the divine ‘Word made book,’ over against the Incarnation as the most pithy expression of the ‘Word made flesh.’ For which, see Lectio Divina, 7.
4 Cf. Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order, 91, 149–50.
5 I will, however, in the last two sections of the article, point out some suggestive implications of this reading of ‘reading’ in a broader historical and intellectual, particularly theological horizon.
6 And what is true for the Church at this point in history holds in no uncertain terms for the whole of Western Civilization.
7 U, V, and Z.
8 Chief among these being Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum, Lignum Vitae, Legenda Maior, and Incendium Amoris itself – each of which, not coincidentally, epitomizes in its own way Bonaventure’s more exuberantly mystical thought.
9 The placement of the four terms in the Prologue in the order in which they will get progressively expressed in the main body of the text further ratifies, upon retrospection, the intuition of a complete set.
10 Cf. Bonnefoy, The Triple Way, 17, n. 1.
11 The translation is Jerome Taylor’s, 132. ‘Study or instruction’ translates lectio sive doctrina here (cf. PL, v. 176, 797). Clearly Taylor has aimed to express a particular usage of lectio suggested by its correlation here with doctrina, where the association of the two terms in this context only makes good sense in English in something like the translation he provides. In his concern for idiomatic cogency, however, Taylor deprives his English readers of the unavoidable resonance of Hugh’s original word with lectio divina, regardless of the immediate connotation.
12 ‘On account of which the Wise One has said about this holy doctrine that he has described it trebly, because of its threefold spiritual understanding, namely, moral, allegorical and anagogical’: IA, Prologue (my translation).
13 Upon which all others must always be founded. St. Thomas argues the point meticulously in the final article of the first Question of the Summa Theologiae (I, 1, 10).
14 St. Bonaventure’s own word is respondet, which may be literally translated ‘answers to,’ thereby articulating the highly concrete, particular character of personal conversation.
15 IA, Prologue (my translation and emphasis).
16 For Bonaventure’s persistent fascination with this series of predications of the Second Person of the Trinity, see, for example, De Donis Spiritus Sanctus, Collatio I, par. 5, where Verbum crucifixum is also included; Itinerarium Mentis In Deum, IV, 3; Lignum Vitae, par. 46, etc.
17 Or perhaps ‘disclosed,’ or ‘unlocked’: Bonaventure’s word is resero.
18 So described by Guy Bougerol, in his Introduction to the Works of Bonaventure, 159.
19 Nevertheless, a role for lectio more or less in accord with my account in no way exceeds Bonaventure’s broader ‘intentionality,’ vis-à-vis the full import of his text. That human intention can exceed the limits of self-awareness – second reflection or even consciousness per se – is a point fundamental to proper thinking about human authorial intention in general, though there is not room to take up the argument in depth in the present context.
20 This observation holds notwithstanding the fact that Bonaventure has a critical point to make about apophatic theology on its own terms, regardless of the traditional association with Dionysius.
21 ‘What God gave us, finally, in sacerdotal grace through which God made you (te) / a dispenser of doctrine, / a dispenser of indulgence, // a dispenser of the Eucharist.’
22 The ‘mortar,’ as it were, consists in Bonaventure’s pithy justification for each succeeding selection.
23 Three more ‘endings’ follow: a ‘summary,’ another division of ‘9 steps,’ and finally, ‘the twofold contemplation of what is divine.’ Unfortunately, the current enterprise does not afford us the time needed to take up the somewhat complicated question of the structural relationships among these several endings – does Bonaventure falter and restart? Does he change course? Or does he layer, again by musical analogy, and finally bring all strands of his composition back together in a higher, more intricate synthesis? These intriguing questions must be left for future investigation.
24 I am grateful to colleagues who helped to thrash out this idea, in particular John Romanowski and Eric Johnston.
25 The gerund perhaps evokes the active sense better than the substantive built on the passive participle.
26 Cf. epigraph, 1, above, and accompanying n. 1.
27 It is in the main for this reason that, I think, one must ultimately reject the intriguing notion that Bonaventure mounts in IA a unilateral move away from lectio, towards the radical interiorization of the Verbum. It is not the urge to interiority that fails to convince: this dynamic is conspicuously present, and one is right both to notice it in the first place, and to remark its importance. However, the activity of lectio, both generically, and when spiritually precised as lectio divina, never ceases in this life, and Bonaventure openly and ungrudgingly acknowledges this fact repeatedly. Here in the Prologue, he states the point openly. More subtly but no less definitively, the activity of lectio to which I have drawn so much attention in this paper is urged constantly, throughout IA, not merely on antiquarian grounds (i.e. from the perspective of the medieval historian), but for any serious spiritual engagement with Bonaventure’s text. Most strikingly of all, perhaps, is the necessity of lectio for a true grasp of the closing passages of the work, passages explicitly asserted by Bonaventure to be concerned with the apophatic, or negative way of contemplating the Blessed Trinity (Cf. pars. 11 and 13) – which is to say, the most exalted way of experiencing God and union with God in this life. If there is any place where we might expect reading to be left entirely behind, it would surely be here. And yet, without the Scriptures, we can have no notion – indeed, no knowledge of the revelation – of the nine choirs of angels, nor of the full, rich context for the final two words of the entire text: fons vitae (from the beginning of the final chapter of the Book of Revelation). As an alternative, then, to a unilateral movement, I would propose a dynamic movement, wherein the soul increasingly internalizes the Verbum – or better, opens itself to the Spirit’s own action in this respect – while perennially returning, humbly, joyously, to the wellspring of the sacra pagina.
28 Taylor, 44.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid., 52.
31 Ibid., 92–3.
32 Ibid., 151.
33 Ibid., 129.
34 Cf. J. M. Déchanet’s Introduction to The Golden Epistle, ix.
35 Volker Honemann, ‘The Reception of William of Saint-Thierry’s Epistola ad Fratres de Monte Dei during the Middle Ages’, 10.
36 William of St. Thierry, The Golden Epistle, 52.
37 Ibid. My emphasis.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid., 67–8.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid., 39.
42 Guigo II, The Ladder of Monks, 73.
43 Ibid., cf. 73–4.
44 Ibid., 75–6, my emphasis. This passage recalls the debate laid out in n. 26, above, and confirms my conviction that even the interior word requires reading – a reading whose interiority and mystical character is congruent with the profound mystery and interiority of the Word itself.
45 Ibid., 82.
46 Taylor, 121–2. Thomas, of course, puts this much more strongly, turning it into a clear theological doctrine on the metaphysical relationship between creation and divine revelation, between Creator and creatures (ST, I, 1, 10). Immediately consequent upon these pairings is the relationship between the Divine Author and the human reader, of both Scripture and creation.
47 That is to say, the scholastic lectio.
48 Alternatively, it can be said that the Trinitarian relations are only mediated personally, i.e. any relation between two Persons being mediated only by the reality of the third Person.
49 Like the theological and the infused moral virtues.
50 St. Bonaventure’s association of reading with the Archangels – the fourth and final employment of lectio in IA – resonates strikingly with this line of thought. The archangels are immaterial, so the ‘text’ evoked here is not materially instantiated, or at least the reference is not limited to the literal, tangible text found in a book on the shelf. Yet angels are creatures, who therefore, like the textual relation itself, belong to the created domain. In addition, the Archangels, along with the angels, are traditionally understood to have their particular mission to men, in a way not characteristic of the other seven choirs.
51 This is true, even granted certain distinctive qualities – provisionally, and even trivially, I would ultimately like to argue – of writing which appear to make it in these ways superior to speech.
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Nathan S. Lefler
Nathan Lefler is Professor of Theology in the department of Theology/Religious Studies at the University of Scranton. He has published articles on Augustine, St. Benedict, Aquinas, Balthasar, Shakespeare, J. R. R. Tolkien, Flannery O’Connor, G. K. Chesterton, René Girard and Catholic liturgy, as well as a monograph entitled Theologizing Friendship: How Amicitia in the Thought of Aelred and Aquinas Inscribes the Scholastic Turn. He lives with his family in Scranton, Pennsylvania.