7 - Leading the Mind Back and Up to God: The Reduction of the Arts to Theology and the Itinerarium

Summary

In Chapter 7, “Leading the Mind Back and Up to God: The Reduction of the Arts to Theology and the Itinerarium,” I compare the hierarchial ascent of the mind Bonaventure sets out in the Itinerarium with Bonaventure’s earlier attempt to show how all learning should lead back to God in the second of the two addresses he gave during his inception as regent master at the University of Paris, a text he revised shortly after becoming minister general which has come down to us as The Reduction of the Arts to Theology. A second benefit of making this comparison with Bonaventure’s earlier text is that it provides an example of how Bonaventure felt free to shift imagery in the middle of a text. In The Reduction of the Arts to Theology, he shifts from a structure based on four “lights” (below, above, inside, outside) to one based on the seven “days” of creation. Similarly, in the final two chapters of the Itinerarium, he stops using his original image of the six wings of the Seraph and shifts instead to using the imagery of the four wings of the Cherubim that surrounded the Ark of the Covenant.