Since today is the Feast of St. Bonaventure, Bishop, Doctor, and Confessor, I thought it would be fitting to write some Latin verses in eius honorem. I wanted to give tribute to the special contribution he makes to the debate over the so-called eternity of the world during the high Middle Ages; he and Aquinas, with whom he strongly disagreed on this topic, are the primary contestants. But I only touch on that topic in a few words and, for the most part, I relied on ideas and images from his biography in the old old Roman Breviary (you have to scroll down the page).

O Bonaventura eximias pro Christicola ortus
Artes et famam Francisci extendere terrae
Finibus! Induta tunica, tam pauperum amictu
Dilecto, docere in ludis metaphysica Patris,
Nati, Flaminis almi nec non temporis, aevi,
Aeterni Italia decessit; tum Seraphici
Mundi contemptu et placida caelestium amore
Doctoris meruit nunquam non nomine dici.
Auris enim dari verbis tibi debet, Aquinas,
Dictis cum nactus conantem scribere vitam
Francisci: “Sanctum sancto servire sinamus.”

Notes:

1. I decided to scan the “y” in “metaphysica” long, according to the example of Apollinaris Sidonius (died a.D. 488) in the Carmina - though that’s in the adjective “physicus”, but it makes sense for it to be long because it’s also the stressed syllable in the conjoined word, meta + physica.

2. With two shorts and a long am I scanning the adjective “seraphicus” - that’s my surmise, it looks good, it sounds right, but even if it’s not, I’ll invoke my poetic license and scan it that way anyway.

3. The last three lines talk about St. Thomas discovering that St. Bonaventure is at work on a life of St. Francis - which is a great book, I have it and I highly recommend it. The old old Breviary gives St. Thomas’ words thus: “Sinamus sanctum pro sancto laborare.”

4. My meaning: O Bonaventure, you were born for the sake of the Christian to extend the distinguished sciences and the fame of Francis to the ends of earth. Having put on the tunic and the much beloved cloak of the poor [the habit of St. Francis], he left from Italy to teach in the schools the metaphysics of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as well as the metaphysics of time, of the aevum, and of the eternal; then he merited by his contempt of the world and his serene love of heavenly things to be forever called by the name “Seraphic Doctor.” For one ought to give hear to the words you spoke, Aquinas, when you came upon him endeavoring to write the life of Francis: “Let us allow a saint to be at service of a saint.”

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