Franciscan Charism in Higher Education, The

Shapers Of The Tradition: Bonaventure and Scotus

Shapers Of The Tradition: Bonaventure and Scotus William Short, O.F.M.* My topic today is Bonaventure and Scotus as founders of the tradition of Franciscans in higher education, and I would like to begin with a brief story. Sometime ago a major Catholic university revised its faculty hiring policy. After a good deal of intense and sometimes heated debate, the faculty senate approved the policy. Its main feature was setting a limit on the number of university professorships to be held by members of certain suspect groups. These newcomers to the university were trying to undermine the structures of the university, were not respecting the decisions of the national bishops' conference, and were criticizing clergy teaching in the theology department. The newcomers kept moving from one university to another without giving due notice to the administration, and they were infecting students with dangerous ideas about the structures of authority in the Church and in society, dangerous ideas about theology, and--not least disturbing--dubious ideas about paying tuition fees. A tenured professor of the theology department publicized this policy by circulating a pamphlet about it. The work was entitled: "The Antichrist and His Minions." As you may divine from * This paper was originally presented at the Symposium celebrating the 25th Anniversary of Neumann College, March 17, 1990, Aston, Pa., 46 Spirit and Life, Volume 2 the title, it was not a reasoned academic exposition of university policy. The "minions of the Antichrist" referred to those suspect individuals to be excluded from future faculty positions at the university . They were labeled "diabolical agents," who would taint the orthodoxy of a Catholic institution of higher learning. Who were these "satanic agents?" The Franciscans. They were not the only minions of the Antichrist. The Dominicans were an even greater threat with their suspect theologians. The author of the pamphlet had the ironic name "William of Holy Love" (Guillaume de Saint-Amour). The university was that of Paris, and the year was 1254. This year, besides celebrating the 25th anniversary of Neumann College, we are also observing the 736th anniversary of the famous conflict of the mendicants and seculars at Paris. This conflict touches my topic for this symposium. I was asked to speak about the founders of the Franciscan tradition of higher education, specifically about St. Bonaventure and John Duns Scotus as examples of this tradition. Many scholars more qualified than I have examined the contributions of these two Franciscan masters to the fields of philosophy and theology. Whether Etienne Gilson, Father Zachary Hayes, Father Alan Wolter, or Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, scholars have dedicated volumes to these thinkers and their impact on the Catholic tradition and Western intellectual history. My task is modest by comparison. Rather than trying to explain in a nutshell the teaching of Scotus and Bonaventure--thinking of those shelves taken up in university libraries by their complete works and the apparatus for interpreting them--my purpose is rather to show that Bonaventure and Scotus, in the middle and at the end of the thirteenth century, solidified the Franciscan presence in the world of the university, specifically at the university they had in common-that of Paris--in the face of strong opposition. I will describe some characteristics of the friars' presence in the university, what it was that so offended others in higher education at the time of their arrival. I mean to sketch the context, rather than the content, of the Franciscan tradition in the 13th century at Paris. As I begin these remarks, I am reminded of an event last week, when our librarian in Berkeley asked me to help him move some materials. These included periodicals, some books, a few old maps, and--for the Institute of Biblical Archeology--pieces of a Shapers of the Tradition: Bonaventure to Scotus 47 mummy. It is with that memory that I reflect on Franciscans in the 13th century, and I hope that my remarks will not seem merely the translation of the pieces of a mummy--because I believe that the tradition, though old, has life within it today, and I hope to suggest some areas in which that tradition has bearing on issues of higher education in the 20th century. To set the stage: the Franciscans had come to Paris as early as 1217, a mere eight years after their founding by St. Francis--just two years after the University of Paris was given its...