Why is Simeon Dancing? The Unity of Exegesis, Theology and Devotion in the Work of Bonaventure

INTRODUCTION

Bonaventure (1274) is generally regarded as one of the central representatives of the earliest phases of Franciscan scholasticism, and as a mystical theologian and ecclesiastical statesman of the first rank. Despite this acknowledgement, Bonaventure's significant work as a biblical exegete has witnessed relative neglect from scholars.¹ While Bonaventure's academic exegesis is noted by Gilbert Dahan and others as important, particularly the Old Testament commentaries,² his exegetical writings have received far less scholarly attention than his other works. In recent years, the English translations of Bonaventure's academic commentaries on Luke, John and Ecclesiastes have begun to spur interest in this aspect of his corpus in the Anglophone world.³ Led by the work of the Franciscan Fr. Robert Karris, these translations hopefully will lead to more attention being given to the exegetical aspect of Bonaventure's work, and to its importance in reception history.⁴

Bonaventure's academic exegesis was by no means done in isolation from his theological and devotional concerns. While it is important to understand the various purposes and audiences of his work in different genres, they can and must be seen as mutually enriching each other. This is in stark contrast to what is so often the case today, where strict boundaries between academic exegesis and theology, and both of these areas and writings usually classified as "devotional," are still all too evident. This perpetuates what Ryan Brandt has aptly described as a bifurcation and polarization of "the otherwise inseparable realties of academic reading and personal reading of Scripture."⁵ But for Bonaventure, there is ultimately no separation of the work of the exegete from the spiritual guide, nor the theologian from the mystagogue. Ilia Delio has written eloquently of Bonaventure's "propensity for integration, uniting faith and reason, intellectual and spiritual, speculative and symbolic, knowledge and love."⁶ For Bonaventure, all genres were seen as the opportunity to pursue the imperative of seeking wisdom and living out the imitation of Christ, and while each genre had a specific purpose and to some degree particular methodology, they ultimately interweave and enrich one another in order to engage and integrate all the grace-illuminated faculties of human experience in pursuit of holiness. In order to apprehend the fullness of Delio's suggestion about integration in Bonaventure's work, it is necessary to include the way Bonaventure did his academic exegesis, and how this exegesis is reflected in his "devotional" works. Such an investigation illuminates the goal of integration of devotion and exegesis with theology, and presents the Seraphic Doctor as a much-needed model of how this spiritual unity of purpose can be recovered and achieved.

In order to illustrate this approach of Bonaventure, the present article analyzes Bonaventure's exegesis of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, along with the closely-related Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, an episode found in Luke 2: 22–39. The particular focus will be on how Bonaventure treats the elderly Simeon and Simeon's canticle, known in Latin as the Nunc Dimittis. This topic is an appropriate choice to illuminate Bonaventure's exegetical method for several reasons. Firstly, the episode plays an almost unique role in the later medieval devotional tradition, forming as it does, along with the Finding of Christ in the Temple at the age of Twelve, one of the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary, but also one of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary. This complexity of the episode reflects that while the parents of Jesus are marveling at Simeon's words, the elderly man then prophetically indicates doleful things in Mary's future; as Robert Karris remarks, "In a stage whisper Luke announces the Cross."⁷ Secondly, in his commentary on Luke, Bonaventure himself will assert the unique importance of Simeon's canticle as an expression of the gospel, "the most brief capsulation of the evangelical story (totius evangelicae historiae quaedam brevissima comprehensio)."⁸ In this way he also will explain the appropriateness of Simeon's song in the daily prayer of the Church. Thirdly, this...