Omnium Artifex Docuit Me Sapientia: A Study of Bonaventure's Inaugural Sermon
Omnium Artifex Docuit Me Sapientia: A Study of Bonaventure's Inaugural SermonCatherine A. Levri, Ph.D.Director: Joshua C. Benson, Ph.D.In the medieval university, the inaugural exercises in which a student became a master of theology were marked by several events, including a two-part sermon delivered by the new master. These inaugural sermons have recently received focused attention. Roughly twenty inaugural sermons have now been published, and historical knowledge of the genre continues to grow. One newly discovered inaugural sermon is Omnium artifex docuit me sapientia, delivered by Saint Bonaventure (1221-1274) at the University of Paris in 1254. In two parts known as the commendation and resumption, the sermon studies the nature of Scripture according to Aristotle's four causes and divides and returns the canon of the arts to God through the three spiritual senses of Scripture. This dissertation aims to provide a theological study of the unity of the two parts of Omnium artifex. Although the two parts became separated at some point in their history, the sermon is unified in structure and content. Structurally, the sermon as a whole and each part are organized by the ortus-modus-fructus pattern that Bonaventure often employs in his texts. Not only are the two parts united by structure, but also the work of the resumption assumes the theology of the commendation. The commendation presents Scripture as participating in Christ's mediation. On this basis, the resumption uses Scripture as a medium, that is, the middle term by and through which one entity is brought to another, to return the sciences to God. This reduction shows that even the secular sciences really contain the theological truths given in the three spiritual senses of Scripture. A comparison of Bonaventure's inaugural sermon with four other texts, the proemium to his Sentences commentary, the prologue to the Breviloquium, the sermon Unus est magister noster Christus and one of his last works, his Collationes in Hexaëmeron, demonstrates that while his view of Scripture is generally consistent throughout his corpus, his inaugural sermon is significant in that it allows Scripture as medium to eclipse Christ as medium in order to emphasize Scripture's importance and participation in Christ's mediation.
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