4 - Bonaventure and the Nine Choirs of Angels

Summary

In Chapter 4, “Bonaventure and the Nine Choirs of Angels,” I examine one of the most condensed discussions in Bonaventure’s text. In Itinerarium 4.4, Bonaventure says that our spirit must be “brought into conformity with the heavenly Jerusalem.” But “no one enters that city,” he adds, “unless that city has first descended into the person’s heart by means of grace.” How does that happen? Well, the heavenly Jerusalem “descends into the heart,” according to Bonaventure, when “our spirit is adorned with nine orderly levels” – levels that correspond, as it turns out, to the nine choirs of angels. In this section, Bonaventure takes two major traditions regarding the nine choirs of angels – one that can be traced to the Celestial Hierarchy of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and the other to a homily by Pope St. Gregory the Great – and condenses them into nine words and nine short phrases. This chapter shows how remarkably concise Bonaventure could be using the methods he had learned for preaching.