Jay M. Hammond - Collations on the Hexaemeron: Conferences on the Six Days of Creation: The Illuminations of the Church (Works of St. Bonaventure)

Ten years after becoming Minister General, and after presiding over his third General Chapter (Narbonne 1260, Pisa 1263, Paris 1266), Bonaventure began a threefold series of Easter season collationes in 1267 at the Franciscan Convent of Cordeliers at the University of Paris. Why? To answer this question, one must understand how Bonaventure responds to the complexities of his historical context via a particular communal practice of reading.

Bonaventure employed the communal practice of collationes to model for his brothers how they should read, not in the grammatical sense, The Hexaemeron models the self-transcending activity of reading within the learning process in an effort to form the identities of both the individual brothers and their communities.

As Part I.2-4 will show, these identities were being contested from both inside and outside the Order. Attacks that challenged the very existence of the mendicants from secular theologians as well as the dominance of Averroistic Aristotelianism within the faculty of Arts, which was making steady inroads into theology, were two controversies at Paris and beyond that contextualize Bonaventures threefold series of conferences. Part I.5 will show that Bonaventures intent, and therefore the content of the three sets of conferences (collationes), is primarily a pastoral and pedagogical effort to lead his fellow brothers to a conversion of heart and mind by modeling the contemplative praxis of reading.

To unpack Bonaventures communal practice of collationes, this Introduction divides into three main parts. Part I explores the Hexaemerons historical context by considering: the collatio genre and its relation to the linked practices of lectio divina and lectio spiritualis, the polemical contexts at the University of Paris in the 1250s and 1260s, and Bonaventures pastoral and pedagogical focus of forming a contemplative subjectivity via the praxis of reflexive reading. Part II then expounds on how collationes 1-3 (the threefold introduction to the Hexaemeron: science, wisdom, understanding) represent an example of the contemplative praxis of reflexive reading, which together provide the substructure of collationes 4-23. This part ends with a table that demonstrates the organizational relationship between the first three conferences and the six proposed visions, four of which Bonaventure delivered. Part III ends with comments about the translation, the redactio and the reportatio versions of the Hexaemeron, and the lists of abbreviations used throughout the translation.

A. THE COLLATIO GENRE AT PARIS

Since collatio simply means gathering (plural, collationes), the term had various meanings.

In earlier monastic communities the collatio was a spiritual conference that was delivered in the evening.

This mendicant practice of a double-sermon finds verification in the statutes of the University of Paris from 1231, which mention that the morning sermons at Paris could be followed by evening collationes.

The Hexaemeron is a product of this practice of collationes within mendicant houses at Paris.

B. LECTIO DIVINA AND LECTIO SPIRITUALIS

The collatio genre helps identify how Bonaventure chose to address his brothers and what he was trying to do for and with his brothers via the communal practice of collationes. As a series of spiritual conferences in line with the older monastic practice, Bonaventure endeavors to teach his brothers by demonstration how to read via the linked practices of lectio divina and lectio spiritualis, these in turn provide a distinct answer to the dual discourse of metaphysics and morals confronting the Franciscan community at Paris. For Bonaventure, a good exegete must be contemplative, and so the collationes teach the brothers how to arrive at proper metaphysics through intellectual contemplation and appropriate morals in affective contemplation. Both are necessary because both the intellectus and the affectus must be fully engaged within the contemplative ascent.

A. THE SECULAR-MENDICANT CONTROVERSY 1250-1259

Bonaventures involvement in the secular-mendicant controversy at the University of Paris in the 1250s provides an important backdrop to the various conflicts of the 1260s, which frame his three sets of collationes in three ways: the question of mendicancy, the issue of the new Arts curriculum that was approved at the height of the controversy in 1255, and the critical significance of the Order maintaining a good character by following the Rule.

On 30 May 1250, the question of mendicancy again became an issue when Innocent IV subverted the uneasy truce at the University of Paris between the seculars and mendicants by issuing Super licentiandis.

The mendicants appealed to the pope.

In July 1253, Innocent IV entered the fray by issuing three letters in support of the mendicant cause. First, Amena flora