Klöster im Hochmittelalter

Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (c. 1217–1274)
Place, Analogy, and Transcendence | 85
In medieval Christianity, place, analogy, and transcendence are inseparable from
the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. While Genesis presents a story that echoes other
ancient accounts of the divine fashioning existing chaos into ordered homogeneity, ⁸
theologians in the early and medieval church such as Bonaventure insisted on a creation
narrative that affirmed the cosmos emerging from nothing through the power
of a transcendent God. ⁹ No sustained, practical credence was given to Aristotelian
teaching regarding the eternity of the world, and the first cannon of the Fourth Lateran
Council confirmed the ex nihilo principle as doctrine. Consequently creatures
are utterly dependent on the Creator at the level of being and continually face the
fear of reverting back into non-being; furthermore, any attempt to speak of creatures
in relationship to the Creator must acknowledge that the two are more dissimilar
than similar. ¹⁰ This ontological divide between creature and Creator, which
is further aggravated throughout creation by human iniquity, is bridged alone in the
kenotic love of Christ, through whom all that exists came to being and in whom
all of creation is afforded reconciliation with God on the journey to the heavenly
Jerusalem.
According to Bonaventure, the creation of the primus orbis or highest heavens
heralds the appearance of locus. ¹¹ Emplacement thus uniquely distinguishes each
creature, and following Aristotle’s Physica, a particular place contains, preserves,
measures, and defines the boundaries of the individual. There is, however, another
element of locus that Bonaventure notes in the Commentaria in sententiarium that
is crucial when considering the question of transcendence. At issue is Augustine’s
assertion in De trinitate that the mind leaves the world when considering eternity
and the Dionysian teaching in the De divinis nominibus where the soul is
described as being drawn by God out of the world into eternity. Faced with the
claim that these revered masters of theology are proposing a route to transcendence
that dismisses the centrality of material emplacement in the contemplative process,
8 Claus Westermann, Genesis 1–11: A Continental Commentary, trans. John J. Scullion, Minneapolis
1994, pp. 110 –122. This question continues to generate scholarly debate, see Mary-Jane Rubenstein,
Cosmic Singularities. On the Nothing and the Sovereign, in: Journal of the American Academy of Religion,
80/2, 2012, pp. 485 – 517.
9 The problematic nature of Aristotle’s proposal had a dramatic impact on Bonaventure as a young student
in Paris; see Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Collationes de decem praeceptis, in: S. Bonaventurae Opera
Omnia, vol. 5: Opuscula varia theologica, Quaracchi 1891, pp. 505 –532, here collatio 2, n. 28, p. 515a–b.
10 Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Commentarius in Evangelium Iohannis, in: S. Bonaventurae Opera Omnia,
vol. 6: Commentarii in sacram scripturam, Quaracchi 1893, pp. 327–532, here cap. 1, n. 8, p. 248.
11 Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Commentarius in I. Librum Sententiarum, in: S. Bonaventurae Opera Omnia,
vol. 1: Commentaria in quatuor libros sententiarum magistri Petri Lombardi. In primum librum
sententiarum, Quaracchi 1882, distinctio 44, articulus 1, quaestio 4, p. 788b.