Bonaventure

The numbered footnote below corresponds to a marker in both the Latin body and the English translation. Quaracchi restarts footnote numbering on every printed page, so the label is page-qualified: it is note 3 of page 999. Notes 1–2 of page 999 anchor in the preceding chunk (`d49-p1-littera`); no note of page 999 anchors in `d49-p1-divisio`.

Pars II.

Cap. IV. Si maior sit beatitudo Sanctorum post iudicium.

Post haec quaeri solet, si beatitudo Sanctorum maior sit futura post iudicium quam interim. — Sine omni scrupulo credendum est, eos habituros maiorem gloriam post iudicium quam ante, quia et maius erit eorum gaudium, ut supra³ testatus est Augustinus, et amplior erit eorum cognitio. Unde Hieronymus: «Peracto iudicio ampliorem gloriam suae claritatis Deus demonstrabit electis». «Si quem movet, quid opus sit spiritibus defunctorum corpora sua in resurrectione recipere, si eis potest sine corporibus summa beatitudo praeberi; difficilis quaestio est nec potest a nobis perfecte definiri. Sed tamen dubium non est, et raptam a carnis sensibus hominis mentem et post mortem, ipsa carne deposita, non sic videre posse incommutabilem substantiam, id est Deum, sicut sancti Angeli vident, sive alia latentiori causa, sive ideo, quia inest ei naturalis quidam appetitus corpus administrandi, quo retardatur quodam modo, ne tota intentione pergat in illud summum caelum, donec ille appetitus conquiescat. Porro si tale sit corpus, cuius sit difficilis et gravis administratio, sicut haec caro, quae corrumpitur; multo magis avertitur mens ab illa visione summi caeli. Proinde, cum hoc corpus iam non animale, sed spirituale receperit, Angelis aequata habebit perfectum naturae suae modum, obediens et imperans, vivificata et vivificans, tam ineffabili facilitate, ut sit ei gloriae quod fuit sarcinae».

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Part II.

Chapter IV. Whether the beatitude of the Saints be greater after the judgment.

After these things it is customarily asked whether the beatitude of the Saints will be greater after the judgment than in the meantime. — It is to be believed without any scruple that they will have a greater glory after the judgment than before, because their joy also will be greater, as Augustine testified above³, and their knowledge will be more ample. Hence Jerome: «When the judgment has been completed, God will show to the elect a more ample glory of his own brightness». «If it moves anyone [to ask] what need there is for the spirits of the dead to receive back their own bodies in the resurrection, if the highest beatitude can be furnished to them without bodies; it is a difficult question and cannot be perfectly determined by us. But nevertheless there is no doubt that the mind of man, snatched away from the senses of the flesh — and also after death, once the flesh itself has been laid aside — cannot see the unchangeable substance, that is, God, in the way in which the holy Angels see him: whether for some other more hidden cause, or for this reason, that there is in it a certain natural appetite for administering a body, by which it is in some manner held back, lest it should press on with its whole intention into that highest heaven, until that appetite comes to rest. Moreover, if the body be such that its administration is difficult and burdensome, as is this flesh, which is corrupted, much more is the mind turned away from that vision of the highest heaven. Accordingly, when it has received this body no longer animal but spiritual, made equal to the Angels it will have the perfect mode of its own nature, obeying and commanding, made alive and making alive, with so ineffable an ease that what was a burden to it will be a glory».

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