Bonaventure

ON BLESSED BONAVENTURE, OF THE ORDER OF THE HERMITS OF S. AUGUSTINE,

PRIEST CARDINAL OF THE HOLY ROMAN CHURCH OF THE TITLE OF S. CAECILIA, AT ROME.

From the Augustinian Alphabet of Thomas de Herrera.

THE YEAR 1388

Bonaventure, of the Order of the Hermits of S. Augustine, Cardinal of S. Caecilia, at Rome (B.)

BY THE AUTHOR D. P.

Among the men and women illustrious in sanctity pertaining to the aforetitled Order, whom that most diligent clearer of Augustinian monuments Herrera arranged in Alphabetical series, Whence he is here referred to June 10 under the letter B occurs B. Bonaventure de Peraga of Padua. That he is to be referred to the present day, the author for us is George Garnefelt the Carthusian, reporting from Onuphrius Panvinius that he died on the 10th day of June. There is not indeed at hand for me that Appendix of Garnefelt to the Lives of B. Nicholas Albergati, Cardinal and Bishop of Bologna: but since in the Preface to the Reader I read, that in that Appendix he himself in the second place added certain Cardinals conspicuous in sanctity: I by no means hesitatingly believe Herrera, that he there treats of Bonaventure, and so judges of the day and year of death. That death had some appearance of martyrdom, as below will appear: but since it has not yet been by the judgment of the Church vindicated as such, I praise Herrera, who abstains from that title; and on what right does the title of Blessed rest? and so much the more gladly do I ascribe the title of Blessed, both from the perpetual (as he asserts) usage of the Order, and from this head, that (as the same says) the monument of this title still endures (endured, I say, when he was writing, for now I understand it appears nowhere) in a certain old Chapel of the Pontiffs in the Vatican Palace, in which the effigy of our Bonaventure flashes with the rays of the Blessed, and is honored with the title of Blessed from almost the very time of his death.

[2] as such he seems to be painted in the Papal chapel, I find in the same Herrera, under the letter D among the Ministers of the Pontiffs, for the year 1391, Dietrich of Nuremberg, the Pontifical Chaplain: for from the most ancient memory that office remains with the Augustinian Order: and today it is held, summoned from our Belgium, by the Eminent Father Master Peter Lambert Ledrou, Master-Regent of the Sacred Theological Faculty in the Academy of Louvain, public Interpreter of the Sacred Scriptures in the Roman Sapienza, Apostolic prefect of the studies de propaganda fide, and lately Provincial of his Flandro-Belgic Province, now Bishop of Porphyrion. By the care therefore of that Dietrich, it might be seen, according to the sense of Onuphrius, that B. Bonaventure was thus painted in the said place, under the eyes of the Pontiff himself, namely Pope Boniface IX, the Augustinian Prefect of him taking care. which would have the force of an express Beatification. But from the book of Francis Taurisius on the Vatican Crypts page 380 we learn that John the Angelic the Dominican, of whom more at the Life of B. John Dominici below, was summoned to make the paintings of that chapel, by Pope Nicholas V; whose Pontiff's name is read subscribed to the tablet, which Gregory XIII ordered to be restored: and the counsel of so painting Bonaventure there with the Saints, Stephen, Laurence, the four Evangelists, Augustine, Nicholas, Sylvester, Gregory and Thomas Aquinas, could have suggested either John Petri (if this one was the Chaplain of Nicholas, as he is known to have been of Calixtus III next succeeding) or Francis Pauli, who, by the testimony in Herrera of Possevinus, was to that same Nicholas for the sacred Sermons. Nor does it seem that it ought to hinder, in the usurping of the title of Blessed in favor of Bonaventure, under Nicholas V about 1450. that his pious corpse, without any cult whatever, lies in the church of S. Augustine of the city, in the chapel of B. Nicholas of Tolentino; and that in the eulogy ascribed in verses the title of Blessedness is not added. For the church of S. Augustine, which is now beheld, first began to be founded in the year 1470; and to it the body was afterward translated from the small church of S. Tryphon, granted to the Hermits by Honorius IV about the year 1285. There, as Ciacconius says, Bonaventure was buried, with a marble pillar with his insignia, effigy and inscription, sculpted (as I indeed esteem) in the very year of his death; at least before any Pontiff had expressly or tacitly assented that he be called Blessed. But I have also a little book of icons, Icons, representing the Martyrs of the Hermit Order with an elegant graving-tool, and prepared at Liège in the year 1612 by Brother George Maigret: where, after the African Martyrs of the 5th century, ascribed to the Order as disciples of S. Augustine, the first is expressed B. Bonaventure, with a Palm and Diadem.

[3] That monument, tomb, in which the body was first buried, I would say was translated into the new church of S. Augustine, together with the body itself, if those had made mention of the insignia and effigy who describe that Epitaph, which is read in Herrera, and think it to have been inscribed on the monument: but this is rude and such.

Here is Bonaventure (who learned in sacred doctrine, and the Epitaph

O Augustine, presided already over thy Hermitages, of the world)

Padua advanced to the throne of the Cardinalate. Thence

In the year a thousand, ten and seven, thirty,

With twice nine of Christ added, he rested in the City.

The Citizens of Heaven, the soul; thou possessest the bones, O sepulcher.

The Epitaph thus read has no difficulty; for it signifies that Bonaventure died in the year 1388: but because Herrera, and from him Oldoinus, where I wrote "twice" (from the truth, from which his death is had in the year 1388 as I think) read and wrote "to these," and so found the year 1379; this Oldoinus judged to be the certain year of death, although Herrera had retracted the opinion; when he had found that Bonaventure subscribed in the year 1381 on the 1st of June to the Bull of Urban VI, on the investiture of the kingdom of Sicily, in favor of King Charles, in this manner: Brother Bonaventure, Priest Cardinal of the title of S. Caecilia. Moved by this argument Herrera defines no year: only, how long he survived, he says is uncertain to him (since there are those who note the year of Christ 1386, 1389, 1390 and 1396) about to hesitate at nothing, if he had got wind of the fault of one little letter.

[4] A year different from all these, namely 1385, noted those who note another, who in this our century, certainly after the editing of Ciacconius in the year 1601, took care that the lower portico of the Augustinian convent should be adorned with paintings of the Saints of the Order. For there, as in the Additions to Ciacconius writes our Augustine Oldoinus, you see the image of the excellent Cardinal, holding a palm in his hand,

with the following eulogy. B. Bonaventure of Padua, General Master and Cardinal, while he defended ecclesiastical liberty at Rome, pierced with an arrow, for the glory of Christ, most gloriously concluded his last day on earth, in the year 1385. They had read, I believe, in the Chronicle of Joseph Pamphilus, Bishop of Segni, that he was created Cardinal in such a year; and in Ciacconius, that he died not long after. But that Bonaventure was created Cardinal earlier, is proved, not only by the aforecited subscription of the year 1381; but also by S. Catharine of Siena, translated to the heavens one year earlier; of whom nevertheless there is extant the 31st Epistle written to Lord Bonaventure of Padua, Cardinal of the Order of S. Augustine, dwelling at Florence. Bonaventure therefore was already long before a Cardinal.

[5] He, as those who have mentioned him commonly have it, was born of the noble family Baduaria de Peraga among the Paduans, In 1322 nobly born at Padua, on Monday, the 22nd of June, in the year 1322; and in the first flower of his age, being made a soldier of Augustine, he made progress equal in doctrine and probity. Among nine distinguished Doctors, called by the command of Innocent VI to erect the school of the Theological Faculty in the Academy of Bologna, in the eighth place though, he was elected in the year 1362. In this perhaps preferred to his brother Bonsemblantes, whom in the flower of his age and still flourishing in a recent doctoral laurel, in the year 1369, on the 28th day of October, we read to have been taken from among the living. At his funeral Petrarch gave to that very Bonaventure letters of consolation; and he returned the favor here, when at the obsequies of Petrarch, deceased in the year 1374, he spoke in the year 1374 at the funeral of Petrarch: on the 18th day of July, he orated before the rostra. The same by a perpetual tenor of blameless life, the erudition of letters favoring it, ascended through all the grades of honors to the highest Magistracy of his Order. For the Master of the Order being dead, Guido de Bello-reguardo, the major Chapter of the Province of Lombardy being gathered at Verona in the Venetian territory; he by the suffrages of all the Fathers, on the 16th of the Kalends of June 1378, in the eighteenth place, was both substituted, and presided over the Order with the highest praise for 8 years.

[6] And since the Man was most learned in every kind of disciplines, and exercised as much in writing as in teaching; he wrote many things, of which there survive only two books of Sermons on the time and on the Saints. Thus Ciacconius: but many more are named, he afterward wrote several books; I know not whether he also found them to survive, the latest enricher of Ciacconius Oldoinus, Commentaries on the books of the Sentences, Meditations on the Life of Christ, the Mirror of Mary, Lives of the Saints, Commentaries on the epistles of James and John; the Ternary or first good on the governance of conscience; the Breviloquium, in which in a most subtle Theological manner, he proceeds from the first cause to its effects. The two books first named also Abbot Trithemius knew, in his book on Writers; where he says, that Bonaventure was, erudite in the divine Scriptures, and not ignorant of secular letters; ready in genius and clear in eloquence; no less reverend in conversation than in knowledge: but Trithemius erred vehemently in the time, writing that the aforesaid Bonaventure flourished under Louis the Emperor IV, in the year 1320; for then Bonaventure was not yet born; and (if indeed Louis the Austrian be understood, elected in the year 1314, against Louis the Bavarian, who because he lived longer, was called V) even Louis the Emperor had died before the same Bonaventure came into the light.

[7] He was the first, as Pamphilus says, who from the Augustinian Order and the city of Padua, then made the first Cardinal of his Order, was assumed to the dignity of the Cardinalate, and that by Pope Urban VI, whose, says Ciacconius, party he had followed in the schism, and indeed on account of virtue, absent and thinking nothing of such a thing. This was done in the year, not 1385, as Pamphilus judged; nor in the preceding, as Ciacconius; but in the first or second creation in the year 1378 or 9. Of S. Bonaventure, likewise General Minister of the Order of Minors, created Cardinal in the Pentecostal Holidays of the year 1273, writes Harold the Epitomator of Wadding, that at the beginning of the following year in which he died, the Pontiff wished, that with him should remain the government of the Religion until the next Chapter. This much more in this Bonaventure, of whom we treat, General of the Augustinians, would Pope Urban have wished to be valid, on account of the schism then fervent, through which it was impossible to elect another than him, who had already long before been elected by the consent of the whole Order, since he was the General of the same, whose authority everywhere prevailed. And this Joseph Pamphilus seems to have judged, when he wrote, that in the year of Christ 1385 a Synod was assembled at Esztergom in Hungary, on the 14th of the Kalends of June, in which the Prior General was elected Ptolemy the Venetian, who presided for 15 years: and (the same Pamphilus adds) the Schism, arisen in the Roman Church at this time, brought it about, that against the laws of the Order the Chapter was deferred up to this time. But he ill esteemed, that Bonaventure was not made Cardinal before he was discharged from the magistracy.

[8] Moreover Ciacconius thus pursues his eulogy. Since he was the sole asserter and patron of ecclesiastical liberty; on account of the rights of the church enmities having arisen between him and Francis Carrarese the Paduan Princeling, on account of ecclesiastical right; he most constantly opposed himself to the impious endeavors of the Prince. Wherefore the Carrarese being angered, secretly through hidden assassins acted (for so all suspected) that a man of so great virtue at Rome, while crossing the Aelian Bridge, went on to go to the Vatican basilica, pierced by an arrow sent from hiding, cruelly transfixed by an arrow shot from an uncertain quarter, was nefariously killed; so secretly, that neither of the homicide, nor of the author of so great a crime, could anything certain ever be known. This matter Paul Cortesius most briefly commemorates in these words in book 1 on the Cardinals: Nor less acutely was Bonaventure of Padua versed in unraveling the selection of the sentences; who for the cause of defending the commonwealth was transfixed by the Paduan tyrant. And elsewhere he thus writes; This man so added sanctity to doctrine, that he is almost venerated as a Martyr, he was almost venerated as a Martyr, transfixed by an arrow by the Carrarese Prince, when he defended the liberty of the Church against the tyrants.

[9] Paul Cortesius flourished under Julius II in the year 1502. Half a century after him lived and wrote his work, on the Antiquity of the city of Padua and its famous citizens, Bernardine Scardeoneus, Canon of Padua: who in book 2 class 7 when praising Bonsemblantes, as Bonsemblantes his brother, almost as a Saint. having tasted some words of Petrarch concerning him to Bonaventure, and having exclaimed with the same; Happy Padua, where you were begotten and nourished! asserts; that he, in the judgment of good men, on account of the sanctity of his life, can so be numbered among the Blessed, as Bonaventure his brother among the Martyrs. Then turning his style to this one, he first narrates all those things, which already, taken word for word from him, we have given from Ciacconius, as to life and death: and finally thus concludes the eulogy. This man to Francis Petrarch was by the closest familiarity, and similitude of manners, and also of letters and studies most joined. Wherefore when the same Petrarch had closed his last day, our Bonaventure, not yet promoted to the supreme honors, in the most illustrious and most frequented funeral of him, performed in the Euganean hills, in the village of Arquà, whither both the Bishop with the Clergy, and the Carrarese Prince, and the whole Academy, and almost the whole city of Padua, had assembled to render to him the funeral rites most honorably; held a most brilliant funeral oration, most worthy indeed of so great a Poet, and of so great a frequency and expectation of most erudite men.

[10] The nobility of the family, whence the Baduarii. That this man wrote many things it is fitting to believe … but, as often happens, either they remained imperfect on account of his unforeseen death; or, since he was dwelling far from his fatherland, in so great a perturbation of affairs, they were torn away by strangers and altogether lost. Nevertheless I have heard that with certain persons there are extant his most elegant orations. As regards the family; he says he was born once of the most noble and most illustrious Paduan gens, but then called de Peraga: but afterward in book 3 class 14, which is on the famous women of Padua, where he praises Balzanella Peragrina, married to Marino Baduario a Venetian Patrician; From this woman, he says, sprang that most beautiful offspring, which dwelling some time at Padua, the surname Baduario being almost obsolete, from Peraga a Paduan village, was called Peraghina by all; whence Bonaventure the Cardinal, and other distinguished men, of whom above, sprang. The same surname is still read on the sepulchers of those illustrious ones joined from the two families, so that they are everywhere called Baduarii de Peraga. If the writers of the Order suggest more, we shall gladly give it.