A Call to Piety: Saint Bonaventure's Collations on the Six Days (review)

In the introduction to his book, Colt Anderson compares Bonaventure's Collations on the Six Days (of creation) to Egyptian pyramids full of "beautiful hieroglyphics and symbolic ornamentation" (p. vi). These things are mysteriously beautiful in and of themselves, but when properly understood they reveal a culture and a religion that is "vibrant and alive to the immediate concerns" of its contemporaries. Such are the collations of Bonaventure; they can be seen in and of themselves or entered into to discover how he spoke to the Friars Minor and the Church of his day about things of which they were very much a part. Anderson's work helps the contemporary reader understand the complex situation and controversies that the Franciscans were involved in soon after the death of their beloved founder.

Today's Franciscans have been around for almost 800 years and are a well respected family in the household of the Christian Church. Not so the brothers and sisters who formed the early Franciscan movement. They fought among themselves as they established their Franciscan identity, and they clashed with bishops, priests, and scholars about their role in the Church. They were a rapidly growing and not so well formed group of mendicants caught up in the whirlwind of church reform between the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 and the Second Council of Lyons in 1274. In the midst of this turmoil, Bonaventure addressed his final collations to the friars in particular and the Church in general.

Anderson's A Call to Piety tries to situate the Collations in their historical context. It is divided into seven chapters with an introduction. In the first two chapters, he does a marvelous job of explaining the Order that Bonaventure inherited in 1257 when he was installed as Minister General. This he does by expounding on the scandal that the friars found themselves involved in. He does an excellent job of explaining the Joachimite tendencies that many of the so-called "spiritual friars" were attracted to and why they were.

Anderson focuses his attention and ours on the Collations in chapters 3-6. He begins with a description of Bonaventure's understanding of good members of the Church as "observers of divine law, lovers of divine peace, and singers of divine praise" (p. 65) with Christ as the center of all things. He moves on to give us Bonaventure's defense of "scholasticism and its usefulness for preaching" (p. 90) as well as an explanation of the multiform exegesis of Scripture. This was a difficult thing for Bonaventure to do, especially given the zealot Franciscans' Joachimite leanings and distrust of learning. Bonaventure takes the very symbols and language used by Joachim in order to bring these "spiritual" men into a more ecclesial understanding of the faith.

"Bonaventure has no problem speaking of the sin of the church" (p. 144) according to Anderson, who moves on to describe how Bonaventure saw a need to return to the Church's "original perfection" and a contemplative ecclesiology.

Finally, Anderson explains the collations as Bonaventure's call to piety through kenosis. In his conclusion, he invites the reader to heed this call in the context of today's Church. I would recommend that all Franciscans, especially the Friars Minor, read Anderson's book as they continue to struggle with reforming their identity after the Second Vatican Council. I believe that in it they will find Bonaventure still has the strength to challenge his brothers and call them to the task of preaching within the Church.