Bonaventure’s Defense of Mendicancy

Abstract

This chapter argues that Bonaventure's legacy on the question of mendicancy combines careful and discerning judgments of practical reason and a tenacious defense of evangelical poverty against its detractors with a profound deepening of theological reflection on the sense of mendicancy in relation to the Franciscan mission and the life of discipleship of Christ. Jacques Dalarun sees in Bonaventure a man who focuses upon a particular element in the charism of Francis and makes all other elements subordinate to it. The circumstances around the writing of Bonaventure' s Letter to an Unknown Master have generated quite a bit of speculation. The controversy with the secular masters seemed to sputter for a decade or so after the inception of Bonaventure and Thomas into the faculty of the University of Paris. Bonaventure develops a nuanced and articulated set of distinctions which prepare the ground for a larger Christological claim. Keywords: Bonaventure; Christ; evangelical poverty; Franciscan mission; Jacques Dalarun; mendicancy; secular masters; University of Paris