Franciscan Angelology and the Crises of the Franciscan Order

Abstract When the deposed minister general of the Franciscans, John of Parma, nominated Bonaventure as his successor in 1257, the order faced dangers from heretical members of the order, the regular clergy, and the secular masters of the University of Paris. Indeed, the erstwhile academic assumed the leadership of an order that was widely despised from within and without. As he began to consider the order and the angels not as a scholar but as its leader, he developed his ideas about Franciscans and angels in response to these various disturbances. In a series of works-Quaestiones disputatae de perfectione evangelica (1255-56), Legenda Maior (1261), Six Wings of the Seraphim (1263), Apologia pauperum (1269), and Collationes in Hexaemeron (1273)-Bonaventure defended the order and defined his vision of its mission. In each of these texts, angels and angelology form an important part of his definition and defense of the Order of Friars Minor.