3 - Where Did Bonaventure Get His Divisions?

Summary

Since Bonaventure could not generate an entire treatise out of one Psalm verse, instead we find in each chapter of the Itinerarium a host of divisions and sub-divisions borrowed from earlier texts. Sometimes he borrowed divisions from his own earlier works, especially his Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. But in many cases, he borrowed divisions from other works, especially those of the Victorines and St. Augustine. In Chapter 3, “Where Did Bonaventure Get His Divisions?” I trace the sources of Bonaventure’s subsidiary divisions within each section of the Itinerarium and show how tracing these divisions back to their sources can help the reader better understand what Bonaventure is trying to accomplish. I give special attention to the sources of Bonaventure’s key distinction between “vestiges,” “images,” and “likenesses” of God and the distinction between “seeing through” and “seeing in.”