Klöster im Hochmittelalter

Place, Analogy, and Transcendence | 93
understanding of Scripture, we would rejoice, excited by the visible means,
because we know that everything now in the church of God, which sensible
bodies would display for our eyes, was complete.” ³⁷
This artistic representation of Scriptural wisdom, which requires geometric exactness,
includes an understanding of locus as the place from which any particular
scene is viewed. ³⁸ Place itself generates linear perspective and the possibility of the
accurate knowledge that grounds the spiritual ascent into God. ³⁹ As a consequence
of this innovative proposal, visual expressions such as frescoes become touchstones
of transcendence not because they point to the divine beyond like an icon, but because
they embody a physical vision of the heavenly Jerusalem. ⁴⁰ While Bacon no
doubt would agree with Bonaventure that God is the divine artifex of the world
considered as pictura, the Doctor Mirabilis shifts the emphasis towards human artistry
and the undeniable importance of corporeal verisimilitude. These difficult yet
necessary depictions of Scripture by masters of the visual arts, when combined with
a humble receptivity to divine grace, could literally move Christians to a renewal
of the sequela Christi to Jerusalem. As Bacon says, to see correctly is to secure
salvation on high. ⁴¹
Conclusion
As confreres of Francis of Assisi, Bonaventure and Bacon shared his profound appreciation
for Creation, but offered decidedly different and innovative approaches
to the question of transcendence from within the Franciscan community. Each Minorite
initially embraced the prevailing thirteenth-century Aristotelian definition
of locus and the accompanying epistemological contention that the physical body
37 […] cum Ezechiele in spiritu exaltationis ad sensum intueremur, quod ipse tantum spiritualiter intellexit,
ut tandem reparata nova Jerusalem cum Esdra et Nehemia intraremus majorem domum pleniori
gloria decorandam. Certe ipsa visio sensibilis esset pulchra, sed pulchrior quando figuram nostrae veritatis
videremus presentialiter, pulcherrima vero quando scripturae intellectum spiritualem et literalem
contemplantes gauderemus visibilibus instrumentis excitati, quod scimus omnia nunc in ecclesia Dei
esse completa, quae ipsa corpora sensibilia nostris oculis exhiberent. Roger Bacon, Opus majus (note 25
above), vol. 1, pp. 211 f.
38 On place, perspective, and line of sight, see Roger Bacon, Opus majus, ed. John Henry Bridges, vol. 2,
London 1900, pp. 94 –97.
39 On Bacon and art, with reference to the Giotto cycles in the Arena Chapel and Basilica of Saint Francis,
see Samuel Y. Edgerton, The Mirror, the Window, and the Telescope. How Renaissance Linear Perspective
Changed Our Vision of the Universe, Ithaca 2009, pp. 14 –20.
40 On this dynamic, see Suzannah Biernhoff, Carnal Relations. Embodied Sight in Merleau-Ponty, Roger
Bacon and St Francis, in: Journal of Visual Culture 4, 2005, pp. 41– 43.
41 Roger Bacon, Opus majus (note 25 above), vol. 1, p. 161.