Collationes in Hexaemeron


The Collationes in Hexaemeron are an unfinished series of talks given by St. Bonaventure in Paris between Easter and Pentecost 1273.
They exist only in listeners' transcripts handed down both in a shorter version and a longer, significantly different.

Origin and history

Information on the circumstances of the presentation and the creation of his text, the author provides the shorter Reportatio A in an addition of the text of the only surviving manuscript of this Reportatio, which is kept today in Siena and 1934 by F. Delorme, was published.
After these lectures: 1273 time and Pentecost in Paris have been before an audience of nearly 160 listeners, consisting of a few masters and young monks. The original seven, each more comprehensive and Collationes as Visio, titled parts of the plant after the fourth Visio, would then transport the author's account of the higher and because of his death no longer come to the lecture.
The Reportator does not mention his own name and cites Bonaventura only as the "lord and master of this work" and indicates that his transcript is "from the mouth of the speaker". He had written off and two other companions had written transcripts, which were, however, "because of their great confusion and illegibility" no one other than this fellow's proved useful.
The copy of its own transcript was corrected, however, counter-checked by other listeners and Bonaventure both itself and by others has been written off. This version of the A Reportatio not based on this first, by Bonaventura accepted as a model specimen, but on a book of anonymous for some time thereafter received the Order of the province of Alemannia Provincial Superior, a Brother Konrad, and then from memory again revised, without, as he affirmed, adding its own, unless extensions in the designs of the logic of Aristotle, and evidence of the localities cited authorities.
The longer version is also decreasing B to a transcript of listeners, whose mode of origin is not known well, and independently by the outcome of investigations by Delorme originated from the shorter Reportatio A. For the longer version now 10 manuscripts are known, one of them from the late 13th or early 14th century has been lost today, could but in 1875 there are still depreciated by Fedele Fanna.
One of these ten manuscripts, Codex 31 of the University Library of Munich, is merely a copy of the first printed edition of the work, published in 1495 Strasbourg, and in turn on an opposite the older manuscripts are supplements advanced text based. She did the work under the title Luminaria Ecclesiae known and turn served as a template for other expenses and for up to the 19th century edition of the authoritative work of Sistine Chapel Clementina.
The first and still only critical edition of Reportatio B was in 1891 by the Fathers of the College of St. Bonaventure in Quaracchi in Volume V of the Opera omnia'submitted. It refers to the text of the manuscript M and the Strasbourg pressure because of their low quality and also because of their strong Reportatio A textual differences do not in the critical establishment of the text and is based instead on a collation of seven of the remaining nine manuscripts known today.
Only recently two more manuscripts were rediscovered, which are not yet considered by this critical issue: a manuscript of the late 15th century, 1984 discovered by JG Bougerol in Tours, and possibly the oldest of all surviving manuscripts, the so-called Assisi manuscript. This manuscript was an important copy of other works of Bonaventura, performed in 1380 by Giovanni da Iolo in its inventory of Bibliohtek of the Convention in Assisi, of B. Bonelli in the 18th century and described the outgoing end of the 13th century dates, was lost in the aftermath, however, and could only be Guilbert 1984 by Ouy in Leningrad rediscovered . An excerpt from the text of this manuscript was published in 1993 by P. Maranesi with the variations of all other manuscripts. A new critical edition of Reportatio B remains a desideratum of research.

Contents

The Collationes provide a representation of central themes of theology and his view of Bonaventure's position on philosophy. In essence, it is a theological introduction to Christianity, the Order and the Church. Form and content to make them smaller and larger works, such as in de reduction Artium ad theologian, itinerary mentis ad Deum, and lignum vitae , and appear as the final sum of his theological thinking.
In Collationes is about the vision of God in the Creation. In addition, they suggest the creation story of Christ and his Church. In the intellectual argument, they seek a synthesis of faith and reason. Philosophical and scientific knowledge of that time to support the argument.
The Collationes are highly structured. They orient themselves formally to the days of creation. Each day of creation corresponds to a vision. This vision can be understood as a perception, perspective or view. The concept is differentiated in the Collationes itself.
The 23 Collationes divided into a preface, in a treatise on the First Vision, on the second vision, on the third and fourth by an Additamentum he is the spiritual interpretation to three, for which he sees great opportunities. In the biblical texts are widely understood as images and symbols of Christ, the Trinity and the Church's life. Depending on the assignment to the areas is an allegory, or anagogy tropology. The allegory is about Christ, the anagogy from heaven, tropology of church life. How to use the spiritual interpretation is made clear in the book the example of the interpretation of the sun symbol.
In addition, the author explains the principle of theological speculation, which is derived from the Latin word speculum. Accordingly, reflected in the reason the divine reason, in microcosm, the soul of the macrocosm of creation, in the Old Testament, the New Testament, according to the principle of promise and fulfillment in the Church and the Heavenly Jerusalem.
The Collationes are philosophically in the Neoplatonically-Christian tradition of Dionysius and St. Augustine and are highly critical of Aristotle. Notwithstanding the criticism of his God and the doctrine of creation, followed by the Collationes Aristotle's ethics and virtue theory in terms of measure and center.

Critical text editions