Bonaventure: Holiness of Life

Although written primarily for women liv ing in Religion, St. Bonaventure's treatise on Holiness of Life (De Perfectione Vitae ad Sorores) will strongly appeal to every Catholic heart. Its value as a manual of spiritual read ing, at once elevating, inspiriting and practical, can hardly be over-estimated. It opens an easy way to a sound and profitable self-knowledge; it wins the soul to Christian humility, and to an unworldliness which is the secret of a contented and joyful heart; it teaches a method of con templation on the Passion of Our Lord, full of devout attractiveness; it reveals the secret of fruitful and heartfelt prayer. In a word it treats of the great and permanent things in spiritual life and practice, and does this with

such living fervour that it sets our hearts on fire. There are no gloomy spaces darkened by the shadow of that Calvinism that was to come; no hard lines of rigour to remind us of Jansenism. Everywhere we find the cheerful seriousness of Catholicism, the reflection of the soul of a saint who lived in the bright and spa cious days of that glorious and supremely Catholic century, the Thirteenth.

To those acquainted with the life of St. Bonaventure his very name will be a sufficient recommendation of the treatise now translated. John Gerson, the learned and pious Chancellor of the University of Paris, who has been re puted by many to be the author of the Imita tion of Christ, set the highest value on the writings of St. Bonaventure. He regarded Bonaventure as the most perfect of the Univer sity teachers. He did not know if the Univer sity had ever produced his equal. He applied to him the words of Our Lord concerning St. John the Baptist, "He was a burning and a shining light." Therefore he compared him to Cherub and to Seraph — to Cherub, for the

brightness of his intellect, to Seraph, for the burning fire of his heart. He had not found any teaching more elevating and salutary than his. He admired him for keeping clear of curious and useless questions, and for being solid, safe and devout in all he said.

To the testimony of one who knew St. Bonaventure in his writings, it will be interesting to add the testimony of one who knew him also in life. This was Peter of Tarentaise. He was a Dominican, and had been professor in the University of Paris, where he won the title of Doctor Famosissimus. He became succes sively Archbishop of Lyons,…