This work provides the means for re-establishing the unity of science by interpreting the whole of modern experimental science from the perspective of analogous transfer of the metaphysical principle of unity rather than in terms of efficient causality.

In Wisdom and Initiation in Gabon, Bonaventure Mvé Ondo argues that Fang tales, myths, and legends are components of the foundation of a worldview that sustains and protects a unique, historical Fang identity. The lessons transmitted from generation to generation by these marvelous stories are, Mvé Ondo argues, central to living lives that reflect and perpetuate the eternal truths of the Fang experience.

Le mode de penser constitue depuis des siècles le critère principal qui permet de spécifier une culture, une civilisation, et donc de la distinguer des autres. Une telle logique a conduit tout d'abord à établir des hiérarchies entre elles. Il s'ensuivit un développement sans précédent des cristallisations identitaires et des conflits de tous ordres, qui naissent le plus souvent de la peur et de l'ignorance. En proposant un cadre théorique dans lequel le logocentrisme occidental et l'onto-mythologie africaine peuvent se rencontrer, (...) et même en établissant la conjonction du logos et du muthos, le philosophe Bonaventure Mve Ondo explore ici une voie originale qui permet de sortir des radicalismes actuels, et ouvre au nécessaire dialogue fondateur que préconisaient Léoplod Sédar Senghor et Aimé Césaire. La thèse de Bonaventure Mve Ondo soutenue il y a trente ans et enfin publiée, s'avère aujourd'hui plus prospective que jamais. (shrink)

This paper examines the dynamics between scientific reason and cultural diversity by: a) analyzing the epistemic structure of 'universalism' as conceived by science, both theoretically and through its historical determination; and b) focusing on the situation of science in Africa, presenting its limits and challenges. It calls for a coconstruction of science at an international scale, which represents a key factor of development and cultural transmission, in particular, transmission of scientific scholarship.

Bonaventure is sometimes taken to be an ante litteram champion of the four-dimensional theory of persistence. I argue that this interpretation is incorrect: Bonaventure was no four-dimensionalist.

Analysis and exegesis attempting to isolate the distinctive uses Bonaventure makes of “ad Deum,” “in Deo,” and “in Deum.” While by itself this exegesis may bear little on Bonaventurean studies, applying it to his theology, especially his Christology, may prove quite useful in understanding humanity’s relationship to Christ. Applied to philosophy, the distinction between the passage toward God and into God, since it does involve emanation and conception of the Trinity, may help shed further light, not just on St. (...) Bonaventure’s mystical account of our journey into God, but of his general epistemology and account of illumination. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that neither St. Bonaventure nor St. Thomas are eudaimonists in the normal sense. Neither holds that happiness--which is a condition of human persons, and thus falls on the creature side of the Creator/creature divide--is the ultimate end of human beings strictly speaking, being rather a penultimate end. God is the true ultimate end of human beings, and He falls on the other side of the Creator/creature divide. -/- Both St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure (...) hold that happiness consists in the attainment of God. They differ in that St. Bonaventure holds that loving God constitutes the attainment of God, for he who loves God has God. St. Thomas, on the other hand, holds that loving God does not in and of itself mean having Him. Love causes us to desire union with God, but is not itself union with Him. God is attained when He is known. However, St. Thomas also holds that loving God is better than knowing Him, and thus better than happiness. This is because God Himself, and not our happiness in knowing Him, is our true ultimate end. -/- On the basis of these theories, both St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas avoid the self-centeredness objections to eudaimonism, while being able to incorporate all of the strengths of virtue ethics. (shrink)

In the history of Christian thought, St Bonaventure stands out as the pre-eminent Franciscan philosopher of the 13th century and as a key figure in the development of the spiritual theology of the Church. The four studies which constitute this volume present detailed investigations into some of the principal sources from which Bonaventure drew his inspiration, from Antiquity through to St Bernard in the century before his own. Proceeding from a careful analysis of the quotations he makes from (...) these sources, the studies make clear the precise extent and nature of their importance in Bonaventure¿s own thought, and the manner in which he selected ideas and used them to serve his own purposes. The first two pieces focus on the influence exerted by the Pseudo-Dionysius, in particular as concerns his notion of hierarchy; this became a central and fertile theme in the work of the Franciscan. Father Bougerol shows how Bonaventure interpreted and developed it, in the process transforming it into a meditation on the relationship between man and God. This emphasis also emerges in the third study, on his attitude towards Aristotle, which demonstrates Bonaventure¿s deliberate progress towards the elaboration of his spiritual theology. (shrink)

This essay further substantiates the author’s earlier thesis that St. Bonaventure’s De reductione was the second half (or resumptio) of his inaugural lecture atParis. After reviewing the central aspect of that thesis, the essay further shows how an unedited inaugural sermon, Fons sapientiae Verbum Dei in excelsis (found in Vatican Burghesiani 157) received the De reductione in its earliest form, particularly in its use of specific authorities and its division of the lights of knowledge. The discovery of this sermon (...) further confirms in its reception of the De reductione that the work was originally an inaugural lecture. The essay then further explores the purpose and uniqueness of the De reductione as an inaugural lecture by comparing it to Fons sapientiae. (shrink)

This is a brief and accessible introduction to the thought of the great Franciscan theologian St. Bonaventure. Cullen focuses on the long-debated relation between philosophy and theology in the work of this important but neglected thinker, revelaing Bonaventure as a great synthesizer. Cullen's exposition also shows in a new and more nuanced way Bonaventure's debt to Augustine, while making clear how he was influenced by Aristotle. The book is organized according to the categories of Bonaventure's own (...) classic text. De reductione artium ad theologiam. Part I is devoted to the definition of Christian Wisdom. In Part II, "The Light of Philosophical Knowledge," individual chapters are devoted to Bonaventure's physics, metaphysics, and moral philosophy. Part III, "The Light of Theological Knowledge," includes chapters on the Trinity, Creation, Sin, the Incarnation, Grace, the Sacraments, and the Last Things. (shrink)

In this work of historical theology, Rachel Davies considers the relationship between aesthetics and anthropology in Bonaventure's thought, and shows how bodily diminishment can become a sign and source of the self's renewal. Drawing from texts like the Collations on the Six Days, and the Major Life of Francis, Davies reconfigures traditional accounts of the fallen body's rebellion against the soul and emphasizes instead the soul's original abandonment of the body. Her interpretation draws attention to the crucial but undervalued (...) role that Bonaventure assigns to the body in the self's coming-to-be, and shows how contemplation involves the soul's tender recovery of the body it once rejected. Though contemplation makes body-soul integrity possible again, Davies argues that the body never fully recovers from its primordial alienation. Instead, Bonaventure suggests that individuals can experience brokenness and healing at the same time, and that suffering bodies can become paschal spaces, graced and open to beatific wholeness. (shrink)

Bonaventure’s Sentence Commentary provides the most comprehensive set of trinitarian arguments to date. This article focuses on just one of them, the one from beatitude. Roughly, beatitude can be thought of as God’s enjoyment of his own, supreme goodness. After a brief rationale of Bonaventure’s speculative project, I assay the concept of beatitude and exposit his four-stage argument. Bonaventure reasons: (i) for a single supreme substance; (ii) for at least two divine persons; (iii) against the possibility for (...) an infinite number of divine persons; (iv) for at least three, and against the possibility of four (or more) divine persons. I show how this line of reasoning is significantly more complex than Bonaventure’s terse summaries initially indicate. My main goal is to explicate the four steps and unpack their main support. Along the way I attend to the argument’s sources, logical progression, and I respond to several concerns. (shrink)

Describes a Neoplatonic hierarchy of the cardinal virtues extending to immaterial beings, and compares its appropriation by Bonaventure and Aquinas.

Bonaventure’s third distinction in the first book of his ’Commentary on the Sentences’ is the focus of argument, after situating the question within contemporary Bonaventure interpretation and current Trinity philosophy. It is argued that Bonaventure had sufficient philosophical grounds to conclude to the existence of Trinity from its image in memory, intelligence and will. Suggestions are made for why he did not do so.

Bonaventure's Breviloquium is a concise compilation of the principal points of theology, from creation to the last judgement. It is the gateway to the seraphic doctor's major treatises, such as the classical De reductione artium ad theologiam and Itinerarium mentis in Deum. It articulates Christian teaching on God, creatures, the Fall, the Incarnation, grace, the sacraments and judgement. It provides a summary of material treated elsewhere in his Opera Omnia and is accorded the first place among his authentic works (...) by Balduinus Distelbrink in his Bonaventurae Scripta. This persuasive text is revisited by a team of bonaventurean scholars. The genesis of this project is explained by J. A. Wayne Hellmann, OFM.Conv.... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Bonaventure's Inception Address as Regent Master at Paris:Omnium ArtifexRandall B. SmithInception as Master and the Principium in AulaAfter nineteen years of study at the University of Paris—six in the study of Arts (1235–1241), two lecturing in the Arts (1241–1243), five as auditor theologiae (1243–1248), two as a baccalarius biblicus and as a lector biblicus for the Franciscans (1248–1251), two as a baccalarius sententiarius (1251–1253), and one as a (...) baccalarius formatus (1253–1254)—Bonaventure of Bagnoregio was incepted as magister regens (regent master) around Easter (12 April) in 1254 to replace William of Middleton in the Franciscan chair at the University of Paris.1At that time, the inception ceremonies for an incoming regent master consisted of several parts. On the appointed day, the candidate would be officially received by the chancellor of the university in the ceremonial hall, the aula, of the bishop before the assembled faculty and students of the university. The previous evening would have been spent responding to bachelors and masters in a complex series of "disputed questions."2 But on the morning of the next day, the presiding master would have stood and placed on Bonaventure's head a biretta and said aloud: "I place on you the magisterial biretta in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen." After birettas had been distributed to the other masters to place on their own heads, the gathered company sat down to hear the new master deliver his inaugural lecture, the principium in aula.According to University regulations, the principium address was to be a praise of sacred Scripture, and although it was one of the high [End Page 211] points in the inception ceremony, the inception address was supposed to be delivered "briefly" (breve) and "quickly terminated" (celeriter terminato).3 When Friar Thomas Aquinas incepted in 1256, two years after Bonaventure, his principium address was completed in about ten minutes. Brother Bonaventure's principium, a translation of which follows this introduction, would require about forty minutes or more to read out loud. But then, as Aquinas himself might have said, "briefly" can be said in several ways.4 A study of earlier principium addresses by other masters shows, moreover, that the length of these addresses varied from master to master.5The Principium in Aula and the Sermo Modernus StyleThe earliest records we have of masters who incepted at Paris reveal that their inception principia addresses were always delivered in the contemporary style of preaching, the so-called "sermo modernus" or "modern sermon" style. There is no need for our present purposes to trace the development of the sermo modernus style, other than to say that its origins lie in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century, and that it had become highly developed, with numerous preaching manuals and reference materials to help preachers master its forms, by the time Thomas and Bonaventure were incepted as masters at Paris, in 1256 and 1254 respectively.6 [End Page 212]In brief, three things were especially characteristic of these thirteenth century sermo modernus style sermons: (1) the thema, a biblical verse, usually from the day's readings that the preacher would use to lend structure and order to the entire sermon; (2) the divisio of the thema, and (3) the dilatatio of each of the parts created by this opening divisio.7The thema verse served as a structuring device which provided an outline of the topics to be covered in the sermon. When the sermon was preached, the thema verse also served as a mnemonic device to help the listeners identify their place within the progress of the whole and then recall the contents of the sermon after it was finished. To recall the contents of the sermon, one merely had to bring to mind the opening thema verse, and each word would suggest the topics the preacher had associated with it.8So, for example, in the principium address Bonaventure delivered at his inception as master, Bonaventure took as his opening thema a verse from Wisdom 7:1, Omnium artifex docuit me sapientia ("The maker of all things... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Bonaventure's Reductio of the Nine Choirs of Angels:How Bonaventure Compressed Two Monumental Traditions into Nine Words and Nine Short PhrasesRandall B. Smith"There is probably no better illustration in medieval thought of how the genius of the symbolic imagination also involves deep speculative insight." So wrote Bernard McGinn of Bonaventure's Itinerarium mentis in deum in The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Woman in the New Mysticism, 1200–1350.1 (...) There is no question that the Itinerarium is a book suffused with symbolic imagery; so much so, in fact, that it can sometimes seem to lapse into a confusing jumble.Certainly there are many sections of the Itinerarium that have baffled readers over the years, often because Bonaventure's use of imagery is so unique and creative and the truths he is attempting to enunciate are so far beyond our normal ways of thinking about God. But there is a short passage in chapter 4 of the Itinerarium that seems to defy interpretation precisely because of what one might describe as an almost austere terseness and brevity. The point Bonaventure wishes to make is one he communicates in little more than a list of nine words and nine short, parallel phrases.The passage I have in mind is this one in Itinerarium 4.4.When these things have been accomplished, and our spirit has been brought into conformity with the heavenly Jerusalem, it is ordered [End Page 583] hierarchically so that it can ascend upward. For no one enters into that city unless that city has first descended into the person's heart by means of grace, as John sees in his Apocalypse. It descends into the heart when our spirit has been made hierarchical by the reformation of the image, by means of the theological virtues, the enjoyment of the spiritual senses, and the ecstasy of rapture; for it has been purged, illumined and brought to perfection.In this way our spirit is adorned with nine orderly levels when within it the following are found in an appropriate order: announcing, dictating, leading, ordering, strengthening, commanding, receiving, revealing, and anointing. These correspond to the nine choirs of angels. The first three of the foregoing levels in the human mind relate to nature; the next three relate to work; and the final three relate to grace. When it has attained these, the soul, by entering into itself, enters into the heavenly Jerusalem where, as it considers the choirs of angels, it sees in them the God who dwells in them and who works in all their operations.Therefore, Bernard says to Pope Eugene that "God loves in the Seraphim as charity; knows in the Cherubim as truth; sits in the Thrones as justice; reigns in the Dominations as majesty; rules in the Principalities as a guiding principle; protects in the Powers as salvation; is at work in the Virtues as strength; reveals in the Archangels as light; assists in the Angels as kindness." From all this, God is seen as all in all when we contemplate God in our minds where God dwells through the gifts of the most generous charity.2Notice in the passage I have quoted above that Bonaventure says our spirit must be "brought into conformity with the heavenly Jerusalem," and that this requires it be "ordered hierarchically so that it can ascend upward." This serves as a transition into a rather odd pair of lists—one with nine words and the other with nine short, parallel phrases—that Bonaventure associates with the nine angelic choirs. These two lists of the nine choirs of angels do not, however, correspond exactly with one [End Page 584] another, for reasons I will explain below. And although these two lists of the nine ranks of angels in the angelic hierarchy take up just a few lines in Bonaventure's text, there is a lot of background information we will need to fill in to provide the necessary context to appreciate them. Indeed, as we will see, in this short passage, Bonaventure was able using the methods of the thirteenth-century sermo modernus style to reduce two monumental commentary traditions regarding the nine choirs of angels—one that... (shrink)

In this volume, Randall B. Smith provides a revisionist account of the scholastic culture that flourished in Paris during the High Middle Ages. Exploring the educational culture that informed the intellectual and mental habits of Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, he offers an in-depth study of the prologues and preaching skills of these two masters. Smith reveal the intricate interrelationships between the three duties of the master: lectio, disputatio, and praedicatio. He also analyzes each of Aquinas and Bonaventure's prologues (...) from their student days to their final works, revealing both their artistry and their instructional character. Written in an engaging style, this book serves as an invaluable resource that will enable scholars and students to read thirteenth-century sermons, prologues, and biblical commentaries with greater understanding and ease. (shrink)

This essay investigates Bonaventure’s account of the original state of human nature and his reasons for holding the theory that God created human beingswithout grace in an actual, historical moment. Bonaventure argues that positing a historical moment before grace is more congruent with the divine order, precisely because it emphasizes the distinction between nature and grace and delays the conferral of grace until man’s desire is elicited and his willingness to cooperate in the divine plan made clear. (...) class='Hi'>Bonaventure incorporates Aristotle’s teleological view of nature into his thought while managing to avoid a view of nature as autonomous. He grounds nature’s heteronomy in the exigencies of natural desires, which dispose our nature to remain radically and intrinsically orderable to a good that transcends those natural powers (albeit not actually so ordered). Bonaventure’s theory thus affirms the integrity of nature, while also emphasizing the total gratuity of grace. He thinks human nature is suspended between its own finitude and a radical capacity for the transcendent that waits upon divine agency. (shrink)

To what extent does Bonaventure’s work contribute to a renewal of negative theology? Rather than answering this question directly, this article focuses on the negative moments which, according to Bonaventure, characterize the human quest for God and the docta ignorantia to which it is oriented. Bonaventure’s synthesis of Aristotelian ontology and Dionysian Neoplatonism is a wisdom that admires God’s being good as manifested in Christ’s human suffering and death.

Je propose ici une hypothèse radicale, mais fragile: le commentaire sur l’Apocalypse désigné par son incipit Vox Domini, qui a été édité1 dans les Opera omnia de Thomas d’Aquin, avant d’être rejeté du corpus authentique, serait l’œuvre de Bonaventure. Je ne peux présenter aucune preuve absolue, mais un ensemble de probabilités ou de convergences. L’enjeu est de taille pour trois raisons: cette œuvre longue (environ 200.000 mots) a forcément occupé longuement Bonaventure et l’histoire de sa carrière doit être (...) revue. Ensuite, le commentaire permet d’avoir une vue plus claire des rapports de Bonaventure avec l’eschatologie de son temps. Enfin, l’indifférence sidérante des historiens aux contenus de Vox .. (shrink)

Th is paper examines St. Bonaventure’s arguments for the impossibility of a beginningless world, taking into consideration their historical background and context. His argument for the impossibility of traversing the infinite is explored at greater length, taking into account the classic objection to this argument. It is argued that Bonaventure understood the issues at hand quite well and that histraversal argument is valid. Because of the nature of an actually infinite multitude, the difference between the infinite by division (...) and the infinite by addition collapses and a beginningless past entails a day infinitely distant from the present, as Bonaventure claims. Because such a chasm is not traversable, as virtually everyone admits, Bonaventure’s conclusion that the world must have a beginning is correct. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Bonaventure's Aesthetics: The Delight of the Soul in Its Ascent into God by Thomas J. McKennaDennis P. BrayThomas J. McKenna, Bonaventure's Aesthetics: The Delight of the Soul in Its Ascent into God. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2020. 186 pp. $100. ISBN: 978-1-4985-9765-4.It has been just over three decades since the last book-length engagement with aesthetics in Bonaventure's work (S. McAdams, "The Aesthetics of Light: A (...) Critical Examination of Bonaventure's Doctrine of Light in View of His Aesthetics," [PhD diss., Pontifica Universitas Gregoriana, 1991]). Heartily welcome, then, is Thomas McKenna's Bonaventure's Aesthetics. The purpose of the book, in McKenna's words, is "to provide a comprehensive analysis of Bonaventure's aesthetics, that is, his philosophy, theology, and mystical theology" (2). In so doing, he intends also to argue for a resolution to a list of disputed questions raised by contemporary voices – most famously that of Balthasar – in the debate on Bonaventure's aesthetics. Put another way, McKenna's project has two aims: first, to understand Bonaventure's aesthetics on its own (historical, theological, philosophical) terms; second, to determine whether that aesthetic connects significantly to contemporary questions in the field of aesthetics. In this review I will detail and engage critically with some of the foundational methodological moves McKenna makes in the book's introduction. I will then summarize the big themes of the book's four chapters, and conclude with a few evaluative remarks.However extensive their merits, earlier studies on Bonaventure's aesthetics are not as thorough as McKenna's and, more problematically, are limited by their investment in predominantly Enlightenment-era concerns. What I mean is that thinkers such as Shaftesbury, Baumgarten, and Kant were absorbed with matters such as the immediacy of the aesthetic experience, disinterest, the role of the affect, freedom of the imagination, and the categorization of les beaux arts. It is this trajectory (call it "the standard paradigm," using McKenna's terminology) that the field of aesthetics, as we know it, has largely followed. Early historians of aesthetics viewed, and often evaluated, medievals through the standard paradigm. Even later, more revisionist historical work sought to understand medieval thought in distinction from the paradigm. In most instances, [End Page 243] though, it is the Enlightenment-era list of concerns that serves as the fulcrum on which historical work has tended to swing. Our understanding of Bonaventure, then, is limited to the extent that we take the standard paradigm as guide.Bonaventure's Aesthetics is so compelling, in part, because it does not begin with the standard paradigm, but rather a more historically sound (and frankly, more interesting) list of research questions. This is not to say that McKenna rejects the standard paradigm. It is simply too deeply embedded in how we conceive of such matters to naively ignore. Instead, McKenna works to situate these later concerns as secondary, or parallel, to Bonaventure's concerns and interests. McKenna realizes that he faces a difficulty at this juncture, one that must be addressed by anyone aiming for historical sensitivity regarding their object of study. The difficulty is what McKenna calls "the hermeneutical crisis," and he formulates the key issues by quoting Jean Grondin: "The basic doctrine…is that every particular phenomenon must be conceptualized within the context of its age" to avoid anachronism. But if so, this "raises a striking epistemological problem…Our view of earlier ages must itself be produced by reference to our present, and is thereby relativized." Thus Grondin asks, "how if at all, is it possible to escape from the hermeneutic circle of our historicity?" (9, quoting J. Grondin, Introduction to Philosophicaal Hermeneutics [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997], 76).Restricted to Bonaventure studies, McKenna poses the worry this way: "is it possible to accurately recover the conceptualization of beauty and, perhaps, the arts of any age – ancient, medieval, or modern – with a reasonable degree of accuracy? If so, does it remain relevant to current aesthetic theory and practice?" (9).In sum, the apparent dilemma is between, on the one hand, "a historically accurate conceptualization of the aesthetic sympathies of the past," and on the other hand, "a... (shrink)

Bonaventure distinguishes two modes of beatitudo: the objective, which he defines as the ultimate end of all rational operations; and the subjective, which he considers present in the soul by inherency. In its divine influence, the beatitudo directly updates the mens, that is the potency of the soul and not its substance. This understanding of the unity of order of the potencies in the soul, understood as the express likeness to God, incorporates the concept of fruitio in a spiritual (...) activity that exceeds the dichotomy intelligence-will and is located well beyond the opposition between thomistic intellectualism and the voluntarism of Scotus, integrating them into a spiritualistic synthesis: the sapiential contemplation. This paper analyzes the deductive moments of the acts of the inner potencies of the soul as constituents of the created beatitude. The guideline are the transcendental concepts of being in consonance with the contemplative activity. (shrink)

Bonaventure Bonaventure was a philosopher, a theologian, a prolific author of spiritual treatises, an influential prelate of the Medieval Church, the Minister General of the Franciscan Order, and, later in his life, a Cardinal. He has often been placed in the Augustinian tradition in opposition to the work of his peer, Thomas … Continue reading Bonaventure →.

Bonaventure’s Aesthetics: The Delight of the Soul in Its Ascent into God provides an extensive analysis of Bonaventure’s concept of beauty, the first to appear since Balthasar’s Herrlichkeit, and the role it plays in the Itinerarium mentis in Deum.

While the nature-grace debate rages in Thomistic circles, St. Bonaventure's theological anthropology and his theology of grace is paid much less attention, with the exception of his argument that Adam was created apart from gratia gratum faciens, or in modern terms habitual or sanctifying grace.1 For this position he has come under some scrutiny. John Milbank connects Adam's short time without habitual grace to Bonaventure's deficient understanding of illumination as proof of an incipient voluntarism and a suspect pure (...) nature theology.2 Turning Milbank upon his head, Fr. Christopher Cullen, S.J. defends the "suspended middle" in Bonaventure by appealing to Adam's creation without grace; human nature has a... (shrink)

This paper deals with Bonaventure’s stand on the separability of accidents discussed within the framework of the theology of the Eucharist, in his Commentarium in Sententias, IV, d. 12, p. 1, a. 1, q. 1. Since an accident was traditionally defined as ens in alio, the existence of accidents apart from any subject in the Eucharist was considered philosophically challenging. The Franciscan theologian has been credited with having distinguished, for the first time (Bakker PJJM. La raison et le miracle: (...) les doctrines eucharistiques (c. 1250 – c.1400): contribution à l’étude des rapports entre philosophie et théologie. s.n., Nijmegen, 1999; Vijgen J. The status of Eucharistic accidents “sine subiecto”: An historical survey up to Thomas Aquinas and selected reactions. München: Akademie Verlag, 2013), between the relation of accident to subject secundum aptitudinem, and the relation of accident to subject secundum actum, while sustaining that only the relation to subject secundum aptitudinem constitutes the accident’s proper definition, a view that Aquinas would subscribe to and develop further, relying on Avicenna’s idea of the real distinction between essence and existence. The chapter will discuss Bonaventure’s rather different reasons for refusing to accept actual being in alio as the accident’s essence. Bonaventure does not appeal to a distinction between being and essence but draws on the common essence of accidents in individualized substances vs. accidents as universals, or accidents secundum species sive differentias speciales. (shrink)