Catechisms, Communion, and Latin Scholastic Reception of Byzantine Thought: St. John Damascene’s De fide orthodoxa in St. Bonaventure’s Breviloquium

Abstract

Catechisms, Communion, and Latin Scholastic Reception of Byzantine Thought: St. John Damascene’s De fide orthodoxa in St. Bonaventure’s Breviloquium Corey J. Stephan Introduction Although it is often noted that St. Bonaventure, together with other Western Scholastics, employed Burgundio of Pisa’s twelfth-century Latin translation of St. John Damascene’s De fide orthodoxa as a reference work, the Damascene’s influence on Bonaventure’s thinking remains understudied. What follows is partly a preliminary study of that influence. Since Bonaventure intended the Breviloquium to be a catechism for fellow Franciscans, the work became his outline of the basic tenets of Christian orthodoxy. Although few in number, Bonaventure’s citations of the Damascene appear at crucial moments. The Damascene is one of Bonaventure’s chief authorities for matters of Christology, and he stands as Bonaventure’s lone source for the Maximian dyothelite logic found in the Breviloquium. Further, from a grand view, it seems plausible that Bonaventure adopts De fide orthodoxa’s creedal structure for his own creed-like summary of the rule of faith. By exposing the Damascene’s influence on Bonaventure, the present author hopes to help further the modern development in historical scholarship of locating—even in the thirteenth century with its plethora of polemical tractates—an unmistakable consanguinity between Greek East and Latin West. To that end, the essay concludes with preliminary suggestions regarding how studies of this kind may contribute to modern Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theological dialogue. [End Page 1215] History Andrew Louth is not hesitant to attribute landmark status to St. John Damascene: “The theological tradition to which he belonged . . . may be said to have culminated in John, and it is John who represents this tradition in later theology.”1 Between The Fountainhead of Knowledge (of which De fide orthodoxa is only one quarter), the treatises against the Iconoclasts, and the myriad chants that are still standard in Orthodox liturgy, the Damascene’s works came to pervade Byzantine Christianity after his life. Yet the diffusion of the Damascene’s works to non-Hellenists was more complicated and less comprehensive. Old Slavonic, Arabic, and Georgian translations of De fide orthodoxa existed by the end of eleventh century.2 The first Latin translation, traditionally attributed to the Hungarian Cerbanus, was completed partially in the early twelfth.3 Finally, Burgundio’s complete mid-twelfth-century translation became popular among the Latin Scholastics.4 The exact date of Burgundio’s translation of De fide orthodoxa is contested.5 However, it can be placed confidently between 1149 and 1154, with modern scholarship favoring 1153–1154 for two reasons.6 First, Pope Eugenius III, who died on July 8, 1153, sought his longtime trusted translator’s skills by ordering the project, showing that it was started no later than that time.7 Second, a gloss by one of Peter Lombard’s students [End Page 1216] suggests that the Lombard encountered Burgundio’s translation of De fide orthodoxa during a trip to Rome.8 Since a copy of Burgundio’s translation had arrived in Rome by the time that the Lombard was working on his Sentences (ca. 1155–1158), but the Lombard did not have access to Burgundio’s translation earlier in his project, it seems that Burgundio just had finished his work by the time that the Lombard began his own.9 This places Burgundio’s undertaking immediately before the Lombard’s.10 The Franciscans who assembled the critical edition of the Sentences identify De fide orthodoxa as one of the Lombard’s most important sources. Further, they see the Damascene’s prominence as only behind that of St. Augustine, Hugh of St. Victor, and Peter Abelard, and they note that the Lombard cites the Damascene in such diverse matters as “faith, sacraments, creation, and predetermination.”11 However, since the Lombard did not have access to Burgundio’s work until partway through his own project, he mixes quotations from the (incomplete) Cerbanus and (complete) Burgundio translations.12 Occasionally, the Lombard blends the two translations in the same citation, suggesting that he may have used Burgundio’s as corrective. As Eligius Marie Buytaert notes, the Lombard’s use of both translations had far-reaching ramifications, making “traces of...