Bonaventure as a Reader of Endings: The Commentary on Ecclesiastes

Bonaventure as a Reader of Endings: The Commentary on Ecclesiastes In the Prologue to the Breviloquium, a book whose later popularity is attested both in the number of surviving manuscripts and in Jean Gerson’s admiring comments about it, St. Bonaventure discusses Scripture as a text requiring a reader to grasp it in four dimensions: breadth, length, height, and depth. Length refers to the way in which Scripture unfolds the history of the world from beginning to end, and as Bonaventure explains this dimension , he twice draws analogies between divine revelation, whether natural or scriptural, and poetic texts. He writes, first, that Scripture’s description of world history resembles poetry’s diachronic progression: “all this world is described by Scripture as proceeding from beginning to end in an orderly flow, in the fashion of a most beautiful and well-ordered poem.” Soon after, he compares poetic and cosmic beauty, this time synchronically: “just as no one can appreciate the beauty of a poem without regarding the entirety of  Jacques-Guy Bougerol, “Introduction Générale,” in Bonaventure, Breviloquium , vol. 1, Prologue (Paris: Editions Franciscaines, 1966), 27 indicates that the editors of the Quaracchi edition locate 227 manuscripts of Breviloquium. Gerson’s comment, that he counts it among his favorite of Bonaventure’s works, is noted in Bougerol, “Introduction Générale,” 49-50.  Bonaventure, Breviloquium, vol. 1, Prologue. texte latin de Quaracchi et traduction française, Introduction générale, introduction au prologue et notes de Jacques Guy Bougerol (Paris, Editions Franciscaines, 1966). Based on Eph. 3, 14-19, these dimensions are “latitudo, longitudo, sublimitas et profundum” [“la Largeur, la Longueur , la Hauteur et la Profondeur” (trans. Bougerol, 83)]. Here and throughout, translations of Breviloquium are my own, with the Latin text and French translation in the notes as presented in Bougerol’s edition.  “Sic igitur totus iste mundus ordinatissimo decursu a Scriptura describitur procedere a principio usque ad finem, ad modum cuiusdam pulcherrimi carminis ordinati.” [“Ainsi donc, tout ce monde est décrit par l’Ecriture dans un déroulement ordonné s’écoulant depuis le début jusqu’à la fin, à la manière d’un magnifique poème bien réglé”] Bonaventure, Breviloquium, vol. 1, Prologue 2.4, trans. JacquesGuy Bougerol, 101. 29 Franciscan Studies 65 (2007) 03.Beal.indd 29 12/5/07 17:29:27 Rebecca S. Beal 30 it, so no one can see the beauty of the order and governance of the universe unless by seeing it whole.” Analogies between Scripture and the arts of music and poetry are hardly unknown: Jacques Guy Bougerol points out that Honorius of Autun earlier compares the universe to an immense zither, a comparison Bonaventure himself makes in the Hexaëmeron; perhaps more pertinently, Augustine understands the unfolding of sacred history in terms of “the kind of antithesis which gives beauty to a poem.” Bonaventure, however, seems alone in implying that what Scripture and poetry share is a form, and indeed, a form in which endings matter. When Bonaventure suggests that Scripture/poetry obtains its aesthetic dimension in the orderly movement from beginning to end, he is indicating that the perception of beauty and order derives from a reader’s observation of a process, with poetic endings—like Scriptural ones—being necessary because they provide a goal for the process, and hence enable the sense of controlled design. The second comparison, by contrast, explains cosmic beauty in terms of a synchronic and retrospective understanding of poetry; the poem’s beauty is perceptible insofar as it can be understood in its totality. In this second version, the poem’s ending is of particular moment, not simply as the aim or culmination of a process, but as the textual site enabling a perception of a creation which is beautiful precisely because complete. Reading to the end is important for Bonaventure, who implies that whether poetic or Scriptural, the ending situates a reader first of all with regard to the design begun in the rest of the composition, but also vis- à-vis larger historical issues—governance, for instance—mediated through texts. Thus individual, mortal, readers who will not live long enough to “read” God’s revelation in cosmic history from beginning to...