contemporaries, and of the place assigned to him by Dante in his Paradiso. He was formally canonized in 1482 by Sixtus IV., and ranked as sixth among the great doctors of the church by Sixtus V. in 1587. His works, as arranged in the Lyons edition (7 vols., folio), consist of expositions and sermons, filling the first three volumes; of a commentary on the Sentences of Lombardus, in two volumes, celebrated among medieval theologians as incomparably the best exposition of the third part; and of minor treatises filling the remaining two volumes, and including a life of St Francis. The smaller works are the most important, and of them the best are the famous Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum, Breviloquium, De Reductione Artium ad Theologiam, Soliloquium, and De septem itineribus aeternitatis, in which most of what is individual in his teaching is contained.
In philosophy Bonaventura presents a marked contrast to his great contemporaries, Thomas Aquinas and Roger Bacon. While these may be taken as representing respectively physical science yet in its infancy, and Aristotelian scholasticism in its most perfect form, he brings before us the mystical and Platonizing mode of speculation which had already to some extent found expression in Hugo and Richard of St Victor, and in Bernard of Clairvaux. To him the purely intellectual element, though never absent, is of inferior interest when compared with the living power of the affections or the heart. He rejects the authority of Aristotle, to whose influence he ascribes much of the heretical tendency of the age, and some of whose cardinal doctrines—such as the eternity of the world—he combats vigorously. But the Platonism he received was Plato as understood by St Augustine, and as he had been handed down by the Alexandrian school and the author of the mystical works passing under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite. Bonaventura accepts as Platonic the theory that ideas do not exist in rerum natura, but as thoughts of the divine mind, according to which actual things were formed; and this conception has no slight influence upon his philosophy. Like all the great scholastic doctors he starts with the discussion of the relations between reason and faith. All the sciences are but the handmaids of theology; reason can discover some of the moral truths which form the groundwork of the Christian system, but others it can only receive and apprehend through divine illumination. In order to obtain this illumination the soul must employ the proper means, which are prayer, the exercise of the virtues, whereby it is rendered fit to accept the divine light, and meditation which may rise even to ecstatic union with God. The supreme end of life is such union, union in contemplation or intellect and in intense absorbing love; but it cannot be entirely reached in this life, and remains as a hope for futurity. The mind in contemplating God has three distinct aspects, stages or grades—the senses, giving empirical knowledge of what is without and discerning the traces (vestigia) of the divine in the world; the reason, which examines the soul itself, the image of the divine Being; and lastly, pure intellect (intelligentia), which, in a transcendent act, grasps the Being of the divine cause. To these three correspond the three kinds of theology—theologia symbolica, theologia propria and theologia mystica. Each stage is subdivided, for in contemplating the outer world we may use the senses or the imagination; we may rise to a knowledge of God per vestigia or in vestigiis. In the first case the three great properties of physical bodies—weight, number, measure,—in the second the division of created things into the classes of those that have merely physical existence, those that have life, and those that have thought, irresistibly lead us to conclude the power, wisdom and goodness of the Triune God. So in the second stage we may ascend to the knowledge of God, per imaginem, by reason, or in imagine, by the pure understanding (intellectus); in the one case the triple division—memory, understanding and will,—in the other the Christian virtues—faith, hope and charity,—leading again to the conception of a Trinity of divine qualities—eternity, truth and goodness. In the last stage we have first intelligentia, pure intellect, contemplating the essential being of God, and finding itself compelled by necessity of thought to hold absolute being as the first notion, for non-being cannot be conceived apart from being, of which it is but the privation. To this notion of absolute being, which is perfect and the greatest of all, objective existence must be ascribed. In its last and highest form of activity the mind rests in the contemplation of the infinite goodness of God, which is apprehended by means of the highest faculty, the apex mentis or synderesis. This spark of the divine illumination is common to all forms of mysticism, but Bonaventura adds to it peculiarly Christian elements. The complete yielding up of mind and heart to God is unattainable without divine grace, and nothing renders us so fit to receive this gift as the meditative and ascetic life of the cloister. The monastic life is the best means of grace.
Bonaventura, however, is not merely a meditative thinker, whose works may form good manuals of devotion; he is a dogmatic theologian of high rank, and on all the disputed questions of scholastic thought, such as universals, matter, the principle of individualism, or the intellectus agens, he gives weighty and well-reasoned decisions. He agrees with Albertus Magnus in regarding theology as a practical science; its truths, according to his view, are peculiarly adapted to influence the affections. He discusses very carefully the nature and meaning of the divine attributes; considers universals to be the ideal forms pre-existing in the divine mind according to which things were shaped; holds matter to be pure potentiality which receives individual being and determinateness from the formative power of God, acting according to the ideas; and finally maintains that the intellectus agens has no separate existence. On these and on many other points of scholastic philosophy the Seraphic Doctor exhibits a combination of subtilty and moderation which makes his works peculiarly valuable.
Editions.—7 vols., Rome, 1588–1596; 7 vols., Lyons, 1668; 13 vols., Venice, 1751 ff.; by A. C. Peltier, 15 vols., Paris, 1863 ff.; 10 vols., Rome, 1882–1892. K. J. Hefele edited the Breviloquium and the Itin. Mentis (3rd ed., Tübingen, 1862); two volumes of selections were issued by Alix in 1853–1856.
Literature.—W. A. Hollenberg, Studien zu Bonaventura (1862); F. Nitzsch, art. in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyk. für prot. Theol., where a list of monographs is given, to which add one by De Chévancé (1899). (R. Ad.; X.)
BONCHAMPS, CHARLES MELCHIOR ARTUS, Marquis de
(c. 1760–1793), Vendéan leader, was born at Jouverteil, Anjou.
He gained his first military experience in the American War of
Independence, and on his return to France was made a captain
of grenadiers in the French army. He was a staunch upholder
of the monarchy, and at the outbreak of the French Revolution
resigned his command and retired to his château at St Florent.
In the spring of 1793 he was chosen leader by the insurgents of
the Vendée, and to his counsels may be attributed in great
measure the success of the peasants’ arms. He was present at
the taking of Bressuire, Thouars and Fontenay, at which last
place he was wounded; but dissensions among their leaders
weakened the insurgents, and at the bloody battle of Cholet
(October 1793) the Vendéans sustained a severe defeat and
Bonchamps was mortally wounded. He died the next day. It
is said that his last act was the pardoning of five thousand
republican prisoners, whom his troops had sworn to kill in
revenge for his death. A statue of him by David d’Angers
stands in the church of St Florent.
BOND, SIR EDWARD AUGUSTUS (1815–1898), English librarian,
was born at Hanwell on the 31st of December 1815,
the son of a schoolmaster. He was educated at Merchant Taylors’
school, and in 1832 obtained a post in the public record
office. In 1838 he became an assistant in the manuscript
department of the British Museum, where he attracted the
notice of his chief, Sir Frederick Madden, the most eminent
palaeographer of his day, and in 1852 he was made Egerton
librarian. In 1856 he became assistant keeper of MSS., and in
1867 was promoted to the post of keeper. His work in
reorganizing the manuscript department was of lasting value,
and to him is due the classified catalogue of MSS., and the
improved efficiency and punctuality of publication of the
department. In 1878 he was appointed principal librarian.
Under his supervision were erected the new buildings of the
