In Chapter 9, I discuss the next two chapters of the Itinerarium (Chapters 3 and 4), those that correspond to the second pair of the Seraph’s wings, those around the angel’s body. These represent the vision of God we get from looking at the image we find of God “inside” us in our intellectual powers — those made possible by reason alone (such as memory, understanding, and will) and those infused by grace (such as faith, hope, and love). I show why these two chapters are the most complex and difficult in the entire book.

After a preacher had made his threefold, fourfold, sevenfold, or ninefold division in a sermo modernus-style sermon, he then had to “dilate” each member of the division. In most cases, the division was chosen precisely because of the content the preacher wished to produce. There were specific methods that the preaching manuals of the day contained to teach prospective preachers how they might develop (“dilate”) the divisions within their sermon. In Chapter 5, “Dilatatio: Methods of ‘Unfolding’ a Sermon,” I show how Bonaventure used some of the common methods of dilatiatio to expand the divisions he employs in the Itinerarium into the discursive content of his text.

On his journey to the Franciscan General Council in 1259, Bonaventure, having recently been elected minister general of the Order, stopped off to make a spiritual retreat on Mt. Alverna, the place where St. Francis had seen a vision of a six-winged Seraph with an image of the crucified Christ at its center from which he received the stigmata. It was here that Bonaventure was inspired to write a six-stage ascent of the mind into God, associating each stage of the ascent with one of the six wings of the Searph. By creatively adapting contemporary preaching techniques of the so-called “modern sermon” or sermo modernus style, Bonaventure was able to craft a work of which Bernard McGinn would say: “Perhaps no other treatise of comparable size in the history of Western mysticism packs so much into one seamless whole.” I also broach an issue that has divided commentators on Bonaventure’s leadership of the Franciscan Order since the moment he took office as minister general. In helping to foster the Franciscans presence at the University of Paris and other leading universities, did Bonaventure lead the Order in a direction contrary to the spirit of St. Francis?

In Chapter 4, “Bonaventure and the Nine Choirs of Angels,” I examine one of the most condensed discussions in Bonaventure’s text. In Itinerarium 4.4, Bonaventure says that our spirit must be “brought into conformity with the heavenly Jerusalem.” But “no one enters that city,” he adds, “unless that city has first descended into the person’s heart by means of grace.” How does that happen? Well, the heavenly Jerusalem “descends into the heart,” according to Bonaventure, when “our spirit is adorned with nine orderly levels” – levels that correspond, as it turns out, to the nine choirs of angels. In this section, Bonaventure takes two major traditions regarding the nine choirs of angels – one that can be traced to the Celestial Hierarchy of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and the other to a homily by Pope St. Gregory the Great – and condenses them into nine words and nine short phrases. This chapter shows how remarkably concise Bonaventure could be using the methods he had learned for preaching.

In Chapter 11, I provide some concluding remarks about what I hope readers will take away from this study of Bonaventure’s Itinerarium.

The goal of the previous chapter was to show how Bonaventure made creative use of the methods of sermo modernus-style preaching when he composed the Itinerarium. The goal of that analysis was to help the reader understand the Itinerarium more fully. What can seem like a confusing jumble upon a first reading will often be revealed upon reflection to be part of an intricately beautiful structure.

In order to reveal how Bonaventure employed these various methods in different places in the Itinerarium, it was necessary to skip around in Bonaventure’s text, showing one method in one chapter and another method in another one. This approach to the text did not permit me to provide a coherent view of the whole. So, in this second section, I endeavor to provide an overview of the Itinerarium, chapter by chapter, from beginning to end.

In Chapter 8, I discuss the Preface and the first two chapters of the Itinerarium that correspond to the first pair of wings of the Seraph, those around his feet, representing the vision of God we get from looking at his vestiges “outside” in the visible realm.

In sermo modernus-style sermons, the structure was based on what was usually a threefold or fourfold divisio of an opening thema verse. This primary division was usually subject to further sub-divisions. In the Itinerarium, Bonaventure associates the basic threefold structure of the work — seeing “outside,” seeing “inside,” and seeing “above” — with the divisions of the verse from Job 85:11: “Lead me, O Lord, in your way / so that I might enter into your truth. / Let my heart rejoice that it may be in awe of your name.” To be led in the way of the Lord, says Bonaventure, is to “move through the vestiges which are bodily and temporal outside us.” To enter into the truth of God is to “enter into our mind which is the image of God.” And to rejoice in the knowledge of God and stand in awe of His name is to “pass beyond to that which is … above us by raising our eyes to the First Principle.” In Chapter 2, “Recognizing Divisions as the Framework of the Text,” I show how identifying the divisiones within each chapter helps to make the structure, content, and arguments of the Itinerarium clearer.

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.

In Chapter 10, I discuss the final three chapters of the Itinerarium (chapters 5, 6, and 7). The first two correspond to the third pair of the Seraph’s wings, those above his head, representing the vision of God we get looking “above” our minds to the transcendental properties “Being” (chapter 5) and “Goodness” (chapter 6). To make the contrasting points he wishes to make about the unity and Trinity of God, however, Bonaventure decides he must switch his imagery from the third pair of Seraph wings to the pair of wings on each of the two Cherubim that were said to surround the Ark of the Covenant in the Temple. After these two chapters, Bonaventure adds a short concluding chapter (chapter 7) that corresponds to the image of Christ crucified that St. Francis saw in center of the seraph’s wings. At this stage of the ascent, all intellectual effort must cease and those journeying who wish to ascend must simply rest in the mystery of God’s love.