Bonaventure and Dionysius

AbstractBonaventure, known as the ‘Seraphic Doctor’, has been described as ‘the most Dionysian mind of the Middle Ages’. Believing Dionysius to have been taught by Paul himself, he regarded him as the supreme authority on contemplation, and the Dionysian vision of creation as the ecstatic outpouring of divine eros and its return to God through hierarchically mediated reciprocal ecstasy was well suited to his desire to forge a distinctive Franciscan theological and spiritual synthesis centred on the ecstatic person of St Francis. He had access to various translations of the Dionysian corpus including one of unknown authorship possessed, and considered authoritative, by the first Franciscan school. This essay argues that, like Eriugena and Gallus, he reads Dionysius correctly rather than eisegetically in assigning an anagogical role to eros. Dionysian elements are present in every aspect of Bonaventure’s thought and at every stage of his career, and by way of illustration, this essay refers to six key texts whose subject matter ranges from exegesis and systematic theology to ecclesiology and spirituality.