Bonaventure

The numbered footnotes below correspond to markers in both the Latin body above and the English translation; Quaracchi restart their numbering on every printed page, so the labels are qualified by page.

PROOEMIUM

IN QUARTUM LIBRUM SENTENTIARUM.

Unguentarius faciet pigmenta suavitatis et unctiones conficiet sanitatis.

Verbum istud scribitur Ecclesiastici trigesimo octavo¹, in quo diligentius considerato explicatur et commendatur materia quarti libri Sententiarum ad nostram eruditionem et exercitationem. Explicatur autem sub duplici tropo sive metaphora, scilicet pigmentorum suavitatis et unctionum sanitatis. Ex quibus datur nobis intelligi, quod medicamenta sacramentalia et sunt suavia et sunt salubria; et in hoc est tam medicamenti quam medici laus perfecta. Nihil enim ultra quaerit aegrotus in medicina, nisi ut habeat suavitatem in usu et efficaciam in effectu; et qui hoc tribuit medicinae medicus est perfectus, secundum illud poëticum²:

Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci.

Sunt igitur medicamenta sacramentalia pigmenta odorifera et unguenta salutifera. Sed unguenta salutifera sunt respectu aegroti curandi, pigmenta odorifera respectu Dei placandi; et haec³ contra duo, quae facit culpa: Deum enim offendit et naturam laedit; et offendendo Deum hominem gratia exspoliat, et laedendo naturam vulnerat naturalia. Sacramenta igitur sunt medicamenta perfecta, quoniam Deum sua suavitate placant et placando faciunt propitium et impetrant gratiam; et vestiunt hominem exspoliatum et hominem infirmum sua curant virtute, et sic reparant naturalia.

Et sic homo descendens ab Ierusalem in Iericho exspoliatus et vulneratus reinduitur et curatur a Samaritano⁴, scilicet Christo Domino, in cuius persona nunc dicitur: Unguentarius faciet pigmenta suavitatis, id est, instituet Sacramenta redolentia ad placandam maiestatem divinam. Faciet, futurum dicit, loquens in tempore legis Moysaicae pro tempore legis gratiae. Etsi enim in illo fuisse dicantur pigmenta et sacrificia Deo redolentia, non tamen vi sua erant Deum placantia. Praecepit namque Dominus Moysi Exodi trigesimo⁵, ut faceret thymiama compositum opere pigmentarii: Facies thymiama, inquit etc.; praeceperat Aaron, ut offerret: Pones altare contra velum; et post subdit: Et uret super illud Aaron incensum mane, suave fragrans, et ad vesperum uret thymiama. Et in omni oblatione fere dicitur in Levitico⁶: In odorem suavissimum Domino. — Sed odor ille non placabat Dominum propter vacuitatem oblatorum, sicut dicit Apostolus ad Hebraeos decimo⁷: Umbram habens Lex futurorum bonorum etc. Non placabat etiam propter immunditiam offerentium, sicut Isaiae primo dicitur: Ne offeratis ultra sacrificium frustra; incensum abominatio est mihi, et ratio subiungitur post: Manus enim vestrae sanguine plenae sunt. — Ad hoc ergo, quod aliquis faceret pigmenta redolentia, necesse erat, quod nulla in eo esset immunditia, et quod plenus esset veri odoris fragrantia; nullus talis poterat inveniri nec ab homine generari propter immunditiam generantis: et ideo necesse fuit, quod Dominus ipse virtute sua corpus ei aptaret, secundum illud Psalmi, quod assumit Apostolus ad Hebraeos decimo⁸, loquens de Christo: Ingrediens mundum, dicit: Hostiam et oblationem noluisti, corpus autem aptasti mihi. Holocausta pro peccato non tibi placuerunt, tunc dixi: Ecce venio. Bene dicit aptasti, quia mundus Dominus, mundificans Virginem «ea puritate, qua maior sub Deo

nequit intelligi¹», aptavit corpus ei, ut esset vas munditiae contentivum omnis fragrantiae; quod praesentiens patriarcha Iacob dixit Genesis vigesimo septimo²: Ecce odor filii mei sicut odor agri pleni, cui benedixit Dominus. Hic ergo erat perfectus pigmentarius, quia non aliunde mendicabat odorem, sed ipse in se Patri redolebat. Et ut odor iste, quo plenus erat, ad alios derivaretur, obtulit semetipsum Deo et Patri pro omnibus, secundum illud ad Ephesios quinto³: Dilexit nos et tradidit semetipsum oblationem et hostiam Deo in odorem suavitatis. Tunc fractum est alabastrum, et domus repleta est ex odore unguenti; tunc de hac plenitudine accepimus omnes, dum non solum placatur Deus ex ipsa passione, immo etiam in memorialibus passionis; ut non tantum passio sit pigmentum suavitatis, immo etiam memorialia, utpote Sacramenta, secundum illud Ecclesiastici quadragesimo nono⁴: Memoria Iosiae in compositione odoris facta opus pigmentarii; ut per Iosiam intelligamus Christum passum; Iosias enim interpretatur: ubi est incendium Domini, vel, in quo est sacrificium. — Memorialia vero sunt Sacramenta passionem praeteritam significantia. His memorialibus abundat et impleta est domus Ecclesiae militantis; et ideo impleta est ex odore unguenti, secundum quod dicit Spiritus sanctus in Canticorum quarto⁵: Odor unguentorum tuorum super omnia aromata. — Unguentarius igitur faciet pigmenta suavitatis, scilicet Deum placantia.

Conficiet nihilominus unctiones sanitatis, id est Sacramenta morbum-curantia. Erant quippe in Lege figurativae unctiones, sed non erant sanativae; quia morbus erat lethalis, et unctio erat superficialis. Unde Apostolus dicit ad Hebraeos nono⁶, quia non poterant medicamenta legalia iuxta conscientiam perfectum facere servientem solummodo in cibis et potibus et variis baptismatibus et iustificationibus carnis. Quia ergo ungebant carnem, et vulnus lethale erat in mente; ideo non poterant curare. Unde ad Hebraeos decimo⁷: Impossibile est, sanguine taurorum et hircorum auferri peccata. Ideo clamabat Isaias et dicebat primo capitulo: Vulnus et livor et plaga tumens non est circumligata nec curata medicamine neque fota oleo. Hoc dicit quantum ad triplex genus peccati, quo homo infirmabatur: per vulnus intelligitur originale, per livorem veniale, per plagam tumentem mortale. Et ideo praemittit: Omne caput languidum etc.

Ad hoc ergo, quod aliquis faceret unguenta sanitatis⁸, necessarium erat, quod afferret unctionem spiritualem et virtutem vitalem. Hic autem fuit Christus Dominus, qui vere Christus fuit, quia unctus, secundum quod dicitur Isaiae sexagesimo primo⁹: Spiritus Domini super me, eo quod unxerit me, ad annuntiandum mansuetis etc. Et quod hoc intelligatur de Christo, ipsemet perhibet sibi testimonium Lucae quarto, ubi, postquam legit hoc verbum, dixit: Hodie impleta est haec Scriptura in auribus vestris. Hic potuit unctionem conficere sanativam, secundum quod Actuum decimo dicit de ipso beatus Petrus: Unxit eum Deus Spiritu sancto et virtute, qui pertransiit benefaciendo et sanando omnes oppressos a diabolo, quoniam Deus erat in illo. Unxit eum Spiritu sancto, et ideo attulit unctionem spiritualem; et virtute¹⁰, et ita habuit virtutem vitalem; quoniam Deus erat in illo per unctionem, quoniam ipse erat Deus, et ita vitam habebat in semetipso, secundum illud Ioannis quinto¹¹: Sicut Pater habet vitam in semetipso, sic dedit et Filio vitam habere in semetipso.

Et quia in se vitam habebat, mortuos vivificare poterat; et ideo fecit unguenta curantia a morbo lethali. Dum enim mortalitatem nostram univit vitae, et ille qui vita erat, mortuus est; facta est confectio, in qua et per quam mortuus reviviscit, et ex morte ipsius Sacramenta habent vivificandi efficaciam. Unde super illud ad Ephesios quinto¹²: Sacramentum hoc magnum est; ego autem dico in Christo et Ecclesia; dicit Augustinus: «Dormit Adam, ut fiat Eva; moritur Christus, ut fiat Ecclesia. Dormiente Adam, fit Eva de latere; mortuo Christo, lancea percutitur latus, ut profluant

Sacramenta, quibus formetur Ecclesia». Ideo dicuntur magis Sacramenta profluxisse de latere quam de pedibus vel manibus — cum inde¹ profluxerit sanguis — propter ipsam convenientiam in significando, quia simul profluxit sanguis et aqua; et profluxit quidem de iam mortuo; in quo convenienter exprimitur Sacramentorum confectio et institutio. Sicut enim in promerendo Sacramentis² efficaciam mors iuncta est cum vita, sic sanguis vitalis exiit cum aqua: sic ergo Sacramenta sunt in verbo et elemento pariter instituta; et ideo ad sanandum non tantum facta, sed etiam confecta³ dicuntur.

Haec igitur Sacramenta sunt perfecta medicamenta, quae fecit unguentarius ad placandum Deum, et ideo sunt pigmenta suavitatis; et ad sanandum hominem aegrotum, et ideo sunt unctiones sanitatis. Unctiones autem sanitatis sunt, quia sanitatem tribuunt et ad sanitatem disponunt: tribuunt sanitatem sufficienter, quae est sanitas gratiae, de qua in Psalmo⁴: Qui sanat contritos corde et alligat contritiones eorum; disponunt ad sanitatem perfectam, quae est sanitas gloriae, de qua in Psalmo: Qui propitiatur omnibus iniquitatibus tuis, qui sanat omnes infirmitates tuas. Et hoc quidem facit in gloria. Et secundum hoc liber iste⁵ etc.

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PROEMIUM

TO THE FOURTH BOOK OF THE SENTENCES.

The apothecary shall make confections of sweetness, and shall make up ointments of health.

This word is written in Ecclesiasticus the thirty-eighth chapter¹; and when it is considered more diligently, there is set forth and commended in it the matter of the fourth book of the Sentences, for our instruction and exercise. Now it is set forth under a twofold trope or metaphor, namely of the confections of sweetness and the ointments of health. From these it is given us to understand that the sacramental medicines are both sweet and wholesome; and in this lies the perfect praise both of the medicine and of the physician. For the sick man seeks nothing further in a medicine than that it have sweetness in the use and efficacy in the effect; and the physician who bestows this upon a medicine is a perfect physician, according to that saying of the poet²:

He has carried every vote who has mingled the useful with the sweet.

The sacramental medicines, therefore, are odour-bearing confections and health-bearing ointments. But the health-bearing ointments are such in respect of the sick man to be cured, the odour-bearing confections in respect of God to be appeased; and these³ [stand] against the two things which fault brings about: for it offends God and wounds nature; and by offending God it despoils man of grace, and by wounding nature it wounds his natural [endowments]. The Sacraments, therefore, are perfect medicines, since by their own sweetness they appease God, and by appeasing make him propitious and obtain grace; and they clothe the man who has been despoiled, and cure by their own power the man who is infirm, and thus repair his natural [endowments].

And thus the man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, despoiled and wounded, is clothed again and cured by the Samaritan⁴, namely by Christ the Lord, in whose person it is now said: The apothecary shall make confections of sweetness; that is, he shall institute Sacraments fragrant unto the appeasing of the divine majesty. Shall make: he says it in the future, speaking in the time of the Mosaic law for the time of the law of grace. For although in that law there are said to have been confections and sacrifices fragrant unto God, nevertheless they were not appeasing God by their own power. For the Lord commanded Moses, in Exodus the thirtieth chapter⁵, to make incense compounded by the work of the perfumer: Thou shalt make incense, he says, and so on; he had commanded Aaron to offer it: Thou shalt set the altar over against the veil; and afterwards he adds: And Aaron shall burn upon it incense in the morning, sweet-smelling, and at evening he shall burn incense. And in almost every oblation it is said in Leviticus⁶: For a most sweet odour to the Lord. — But that odour did not appease the Lord, because of the emptiness of the things offered, as the Apostle says to the Hebrews in the tenth chapter⁷: The Law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and so on. Nor did it appease, because of the uncleanness of those who offered, as is said in Isaiah the first chapter: Offer sacrifice no more in vain; incense is an abomination to me; and the reason is subjoined afterwards: For your hands are full of blood. — To this end, therefore, that anyone might make fragrant confections, it was necessary that there should be no uncleanness in him, and that he should be full of the fragrance of true odour; but no such one could be found, nor be generated from man, because of the uncleanness of the one generating: and therefore it was necessary that the Lord himself should by his own power fit a body for him, according to that word of the Psalm which the Apostle takes up in the tenth chapter to the Hebrews⁸, speaking of Christ: Coming into the world, he says: Sacrifice and oblation thou wouldest not, but a body thou hast fitted to me. Holocausts for sin did not please thee, then said I: Behold, I come. Well does he say thou hast fitted, because the Lord [was] clean, having cleansed the Virgin «with that purity than which a greater cannot be

understood under God¹», and fitted a body for him, that it might be a vessel of cleanness containing every fragrance; which the patriarch Jacob, foreseeing, spoke of in Genesis the twenty-seventh chapter²: Behold, the smell of my son is as the smell of a plentiful field, which the Lord hath blessed. This one, then, was the perfect perfumer, because he did not beg his odour from elsewhere, but himself in himself was fragrant to the Father. And that this odour, with which he was full, might be derived to others, he offered himself to God the Father for all, according to that word to the Ephesians in the fifth chapter³: He hath loved us and hath delivered himself up an oblation and a sacrifice to God for an odour of sweetness. Then was the alabaster box broken, and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment; then of this fulness we all have received, since God is appeased not only by the Passion itself, but even in the memorials of the Passion; so that not only the Passion is a confection of sweetness, but also the memorials, namely the Sacraments, according to that word of Ecclesiasticus the forty-ninth chapter⁴: The memory of Josias is like the composition of a sweet smell made by the work of a perfumer; so that by Josias we may understand Christ in his Passion; for Josias is interpreted: where the burning of the Lord is, or, in whom there is sacrifice. — But the memorials are the Sacraments signifying the Passion now past. With these memorials the house of the Church militant abounds and has been filled; and therefore it has been filled with the odour of the ointment, according to what the Holy Spirit says in the fourth chapter of the Canticles⁵: The odour of thy ointments is above all aromatical spices. — The apothecary, therefore, shall make confections of sweetness, namely such as appease God.

He shall nonetheless make up ointments of health, that is, Sacraments curing the disease. For there were indeed in the Law figurative unctions, but they were not healing; because the disease was lethal, and the unction was superficial. Whence the Apostle says to the Hebrews in the ninth chapter⁶ that the legal medicines could not make him that serveth perfect according to the conscience, consisting only in meats and drinks and divers washings and justices of the flesh. Since, therefore, they anointed the flesh, while the lethal wound was in the mind, they could not cure. Whence to the Hebrews in the tenth chapter⁷: It is impossible that with the blood of oxen and of goats sins should be taken away. Therefore Isaiah cried out and said in the first chapter: The wound and bruise and swelling sore is not bound up, nor dressed with medicine, nor soothed with oil. This he says as regards the threefold kind of sin by which man was made infirm: by the wound is understood original sin, by the bruise venial sin, by the swelling sore mortal sin. And therefore he puts first: The whole head is sick, and so on.

To this end, therefore, that anyone might make ointments of health⁸, it was necessary that he should bring a spiritual unction and a vital power. And this was Christ the Lord, who truly was Christ because anointed, according to what is said in Isaiah the sixty-first chapter⁹: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me, to preach to the meek, and so on. And that this is to be understood of Christ, he himself bears witness to himself in the fourth chapter of Luke, where, after he had read this word, he said: This day is fulfilled this Scripture in your ears. He was able to make up a healing unction, according to what blessed Peter says of him in the tenth chapter of Acts: God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. He anointed him with the Holy Spirit, and therefore he brought a spiritual unction; and with power¹⁰, and so he had a vital power; for God was in him through the unction, since he himself was God, and so he had life in himself, according to that word of John the fifth chapter¹¹: As the Father hath life in himself, so he hath given to the Son also to have life in himself.

And because he had life in himself, he could give life to the dead; and therefore he made ointments curing the lethal disease. For while he united our mortality to life, and he who was life died, there was made a confection in which and through which the dead man comes to life again, and from his death the Sacraments have the efficacy of giving life. Whence upon that word to the Ephesians in the fifth chapter¹²: This is a great sacrament; but I speak in Christ and in the Church, Augustine says: «Adam sleeps, that Eve may be made; Christ dies, that the Church may be made. While Adam sleeps, Eve is made from his side; when Christ is dead, his side is struck with the lance, that there may flow forth

the Sacraments by which the Church may be formed». Therefore the Sacraments are said to have flowed forth rather from the side than from the feet or the hands — although from thence¹ blood had flowed — because of the very fittingness in signifying, since blood and water flowed forth together; and they flowed forth indeed from one already dead; in which is fittingly expressed the making and institution of the Sacraments. For just as in meriting efficacy for the Sacraments² death was joined with life, so the vital blood went out with the water: so, then, the Sacraments are instituted alike in word and in element; and therefore, for healing, they are said to be not only made, but also made up³.

These Sacraments, therefore, are perfect medicines, which the apothecary made for the appeasing of God, and therefore they are confections of sweetness; and for the healing of the sick man, and therefore they are ointments of health. And they are ointments of health because they bestow health and dispose to health: they bestow health sufficiently, which is the health of grace, of which it is said in the Psalm⁴: Who healeth the broken of heart and bindeth up their bruises; they dispose to perfect health, which is the health of glory, of which it is said in the Psalm: Who forgiveth all thy iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases. And this indeed he does in glory. And according to this, this book⁵, and so on.

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