T. Alexander Giltner

Chapter 12: The Center Holds

Echoes of Eriugena in the Christo-cosmic Exemplarism of Bonaventure

T. Alexander Giltner

The below is from chapter 12 of this book: The book is:

The Spirit and the Church: Peter Damian Fehlner’s Franciscan Development of Vatican II on the Themes of the Holy Spirit, Mary, and the Church: Festschrift

Editors:
J. Isaac Goff
Christiaan W. Kappes
Edward J. Ondrako

Publisher:
Pickwick Publications 2020

In this paper, I do not intend to prove anything. That the parallels of thought and systems between two thinkers separated by centuries could represent an intellectual reception is always questionable, at least from a historical perspective, especially without concrete material evidence to substantiate it–which I have no intention of providing here. Rather, this paper is meant to serve as a sort of “think-piece” on the possible influence of John Scottus Eriugena–the Irish-born Carolingian thinker–on the cosmic exemplarism of our Seraphic Doctor, Saint Bonaventure. Proving such a relation would require nothing less than a monographic study and said material evidence that I have not yet located. Yet showcasing the plausibility of such a relation by exhibiting said parallels should, I think, give impetus for further investigation.

Scholars have long-assumed Greek influence on Bonaventure’s thought, namely Dionysius and the Damascene. This “think-piece” will show the need to investigate an untapped resource for Bonaventurean and Franciscan theology: the Maximian cosmology as it was transmitted through Eriugena. Of course, I am not the first to suspect the possible connection between Bonaventure and Eriugena. Guy Bougerol, in his seminal introduction to Bonaventure studies, noted without qualification the line of influence, though held that it was mitigated by the Victorines–specifically Hugh and Richard–who removed the “fanciful elements,” or more colloquially: the crazy bits.540 Hans Urs von Balthasar, too, speculated on such a connection.541 And yet, we have not had much more than hints. Furthermore, speculation has generally stopped short of Dionysian apophaticism.542 However, when looking at the basic architecture of the cosmos in the systems of these two figures, and especially the prized place of Christ in this structure, one can see striking parallels that suggest more than just a passing influence. By the end, it should be clear that this inquiry is not only warranted, but vital if we are to fully understand the cosmology and metaphysics of Bonaventure.

Word and Creation, Exemplarism and Theophany

Bonaventure writes:

“The Word therefore expresses the Father and [all] things, which were made through him, and leads us principally to the unity of the gathering Father. And accordingly he is the Tree of Life, because through this Center we return and are vivified in the very font of life . . . this is the reducing metaphysical Center, and this is our whole metaphysics: concerning emanation, exemplarity, consummation–namely to be illuminated through the spiritual rays and reduced to the highest. And so you will be a true metaphysician.”543

This passage is one of the most famous from Bonaventure, and justifiably so, for it represents the heart of Bonaventure’s philosophy and theology. It stands as one of the starkest expressions of the core concept at the center of his basic framework: Christocentric exemplarism.544 It rests very near the center of the first conference of the Hexaëmeron, Bonaventure’s final and putatively most mature work. In this first conference, Bonaventure contends Christ is the medium, the center of all things–not only of metaphysics, but of every locus of knowledge and reality, and even the center of the divine life ad intra, the Trinity itself. To be a true metaphysician is to recognize the basic triadic expression of the Word in all things: from the Father as transcendental communicability, the agent through which all of Creation comes into being, and through which all of Creation is brought back into perfect union with the Father.

So for Bonaventure, theology begins with two interrelated points of reference: the Trinity and the Person of Christ. These two points form a sort of double-helix from which all of theology–and ultimately all of reality–flows and finds its end. According to Bonaventure:

“And because in [the Father] the conceptive power conceives a similitude, encompassing all things under one regard or aspect, he conceives or generates one Word, which is the imitative similitude of the Father and the exemplative and operative similitude of things, and so holds as the center [medium]. And the Father is said to operate through the Word.”545

The Word is thus the expression of the Father to every and all other things: “Because the Word expresses both the Father and himself and the Holy Spirit as well as all other things.”546 The Word is center both ad intra and ad extra, in the Word’s mediatory role within the Trinity, in Christ’s mediatory role between Creator and creation, and between creatures. Christ holds the middle (medium) in all positions:

“The key of contemplation, therefore, is the triple understanding [intellectus; ff.], namely: the understanding of the uncreated Word, through which all things are produced; the understanding of the incarnate Word, through which all things are repaired; [and] the understanding of the inspired Word, through which all things are revealed. Unless one is able to consider concerning things–how they are originated, how they are reduced into the end, and how God shines in them–one is not able to have understanding [intelligentiam].”547

Eriugena too connects the Word’s generation to Creation’s procession:

“Before, then, this visible world proceeded through generation in genus and species and all sensible numbers, God the Father begot his Word before all worldly times, in which and through which he created the most perfect primordial causes of all natures, which divine providence, by administering in a certain wondrous harmony this visible world in its procession through the generation in numbers of places and of times and in multiple distinctions of genus and species from the moment it begins to the very end.”548

Or as Eriugena writes in his Homilia on the Prologue to the Gospel of John:

“By his being born before all things from the Father, were not all things made with him and through him? Now this generation of this one from the Father is the creation [conditio] of all causes and the operation and effect of all that proceeds from the causes in genus and species. Naturally, all things were made through the generation of the Word of God from God the Beginning. Hear the divine and ineffable paradox, the unlockable secret, the invisible depth, the incomprehensible mystery: Through he who was not made but begotten, all things were made but not begotten.”549

Now, there are of course notable differences between the two thinkers on this point. For example, Eriugena believes that the “primordial causes,” or the divine ideas, while coeternal with the divine essence, are nonetheless created,550 while Bonaventure holds that the ideas are essentially identical to God’s being–and thus uncreated–though they are rationally distinct.551 However, like Bonaventure, Eriugena intimates that the causes are “principal exemplars”552 that especially subsist in the Word, indicative of the Word’s mediatory role both in the divine life and between Creator and creature. So, for both Eriugena and Bonaventure, the life of God ad intra orders God’s work ad extra, and that work is specifically mediated through the exemplars, or ideas, from the Exemplar, or the Word.553 Further, the divine and created orders are both centered in emanation, and attest to the basic circularity of all things, revolving around the second Person of the Trinity.

Bonaventure uses this exemplary logic to elucidate Creation. The world is–that is, it exists and is known and knowable–through the emanatory exemplarity of the eternal Art.554 From this Art, the ideas causally emanate out into creation in similar fashion as the Word emanated from the Father.555 In all real, knowable things that emanate from the Word, Bonaventure says “we can see the eternal generation of the Word, the Image, and the Son eternally emanating from God the Father.”556 This is why Bonaventure says later in the Itinerarium that the conditions of truth come “from exemplarity in the eternal Art, according to which things have a mutual fittingness and relation [aptitudinem et habitudinem ad invicem] according to the representation of them from the eternal Art.”557 Thus, exemplarity grounds not only the knowledge of things in certitude (and without which there can be no certitude), but also the certainty of real things, ontologically rooted in the Art himself. Those things that are emanated are the ontos of all reality, the basis of every creaturely being.

For Eriugena, these exemplars are found in the theophanies, the “manifestations of the divine:” “the divine nature . . . in its theophanies consents [accipit] to appear from the most hidden recesses of its nature . . .”558 Like Bonaventure, this is how we encounter God and come to know the Creator in things created. Eriugena writes that “from the primordial causes, ideas [cognitiones] which are accustomed to be called ‘theophanies’ by the Greeks, and apparitions of the divine by the Latins, [the soul] fastens to itself and through these perceives a certain notion [notitiam] from God, through the first causes.”559 Furthermore, as theophanies function as manifestations or apparitions of the divine, they provide a connection between the procession of ideas and creatures themselves:

“And truly [the divine nature] is said to proceed, beginning to appear in its theophanies as from nothing into something, and which properly is considered [existimatur] beyond every essence and also properly is known [cognoscitur] in every essence. And therefore every visible and invisible creature can be called theophany.”560

In this way, Eriugena’s theophanic and Christocentric cosmology operates in a remarkably similar vein as Bonaventure Christo-cosmic exemplarism. Just as for Bonaventure, every creature is an example of the Exemplar, for Eriugena every creature is a theophany of the divine nature, all creatures flowing from the causal principle located in the Word.

Cosmic Word and the Word-Made-Flesh

These two parallel approaches to how God creates and lies hidden in Creation give both Eriugena and Bonaventure a robust ontological foundation for all of reality. God is known and is in the world through the ideas that have emanated or proceeded from the Word, as the Word has emanated from the Father. Christ is the medium and expression561 of both the divine and created order, holding the center place in the Trinity and in all things. The true metaphysician recognizes this basic reality: Christ is the center in which all things hold, representing the role of communication in the vita divinitatis both ad intra and ad extra, communicating the innascible, incommunicable primum principium as both cosmic Word and, even more crucially for us, Word-Made-Flesh.

Indeed, it is his Incarnation that draws all the aspects of the cosmos together, being the perfect mediation of their origin to their end. Bonaventure writes: “Just as a beginning is conjoined to an end in a circle, so in the Incarnation the lowest is conjoined to the highest, so that God [is conjoined] to the dust, and the first to the final.”562 This extends even to the divine ideas in their various modes:

“Through a similar reason it can be argued that the highest and most noble perfection in the universe cannot be, unless by nature, in which are the seminal reasons, and by nature, in which are the intellectual reasons, and by nature, in which the ideal reasons, simultaneously concur [concurrant] in a unity of person, which is made in the Incarnation of the Son of God. Therefore, the whole natural philosophy bespeaks [praedicat] through the condition of proportion the Word of God born and incarnated, so that he may be alpha and omega, born namely in the beginning and before temporality, incarnated within the bounds of the ages [in fine saeculorum].”563

The Incarnation of the Word is the fulfillment and perfection of all reality.

But why? Why does this drama turn upon the Incarnation? In one sense, it concerns sin and the Fall, but there is a more fundamental reason: it is because of us–where we stand in the drama of Creation as humans. Humans are the middle creatures, formed from the dust of the earth (de limo terrae) but also the celestial nature (natura caelesti).564 As Bonaventure writes in the Breviloquium:

“Therefore, so that the Power might be manifested, according to the praise, glory, and honor of its own self, it produced all things from nothing, making something near to nothing, namely corporal material, and near to itself, namely spiritual substance, and it simultaneously joins these in one human in a unity of nature and person, namely a rational soul and body.”565

The Incarnated Christ is mediator because the human is the mediator within Creation all and sundry and between Creation and God.566 Humanity mediates the entire cosmos as the middle point of all things, the microcosm in which the whole of the macrocosm subsists, through which the cosmos was created. At the most basic level, humankind contains both the sensible nature (of rocks, plants, and animals) and the intelligible nature (of the angels and incorporeal beings) within itself. Like Christ, indeed modeled after Christ, the human being is also a medium.

Eriugena agrees, drawing specifically on Maximus’s conception of humanity as the “workshop” of all of Creation.567 Human nature is the “universal nature,” because “all things were created in man.”568 Humanity is the crown of all creation, the apex of the cosmos, and through which all things should return. Eriugena writes:

“Therefore with respect to this, it is given to be understood from the words of the aforementioned master:569 the Human was made among the primordial causes of things according to the Image of God so that in [the Human] every creature, from things both intelligible and sensible as diverse extremes, might be made one inseparable composition, so that [the Human] may be the center and union of all creatures.”570

This agreement between the two theologians is even seen in their read of the first chapter of Genesis. According to Bonaventure, God creates the human soul (anima humana) last “as the end and consummation of all things.”571 So too for Eriugena, though he takes a much less literal reading of Genesis: “So then after the narration of the visible world, the honored human is introduced, as the conclusion of all, so that it might be understood that all created things which are narrated before him ought to be universally comprehended in him.”572

So the first and final purpose of the Incarnation is that all should become, through humankind, what they were intended to be–as they were intended to be–through God’s intended means, mediated through the Exemplar who emanates and draws all exempla back to himself through himself to participate fully in the divine life. This is the final reditus or consummatio. This is why Christ is our metaphysic. The interpenetrating power of humanity, as the crown of creation, is taken up in the Word, and through the Word-Made-Flesh, all things are brought along the path of return into God.

And so, finally, we are brought back through the Incarnate Word to the ultimate and first plentitudinal fount of all being. Eriugena writes: “The Word was not made flesh on account of his own self, but on account of us, who could not be transmuted into sons of God except through the flesh of the Word. He descended alone, he ascends with many. He who made the human from God makes gods from humans . . . that is, he possessed our nature, so that he might make us participants in his nature.”573 And so the cosmos is consummated. Christ is all in all, the center of all things and the mediator of all things in the Trinity and in Creation. It should come as no surprise by now that Bonaventure presents a similar theologic: “So the desire [appetitus] of the entire human nature was completed, when the noblest fitness, which was in human nature, according to which it was able to be united to the divine, is reduced to the perfect act through the work of the Incarnation.”574 As it is in the divine life, so it was intended in creation ad extra, lost but then regained through the Incarnation, which itself is the transcendent point of motion back to the Creator, where all things are brought back through the ideas, causes, or exemplars that form the basis of their ontology to the primal source, the primum principium. Bonaventure declares, nearly narrating his entire cosmos: “And because God the Father is the principle of the Son, and the Son the principle of all things, so then the Son is produced and produces,” and so “all things are reduced through the Son to and in [the Father]. And therefore reduction575 is aptly appropriated to the Son.”576

What is as striking as the parallels themselves is how particularly they are situated within a peculiar, nuanced logic of the divine being, Christ, and Creation. No doubt Bonaventure and Eriugena shared sources, as is evidenced for example by their plain Neoplatonism. And considering each parallel in solo, one could perhaps conceive of some shared source or even coincidence. But it is not only the corresponding concepts; it is how they fit together. Connecting theophanic or exemplaristic Creation precisely to its culmination in the Incarnation, through which all things are brought back to their final end in God, bespeaks not only an Eastern but a uniquely Maximian influence that Bonaventure would be hard-pressed to encounter simply through the Damascene or Dionysius. It is their theological method and content considered as a whole that most tightly weaves the thread of reception from Eriugena to Bonaventure. There is represented in the theologic of these two thinkers a sort of dialectic that holds their respective universes together. It is not by any means a Hegelian dialectic. Rather, it is a way of thinking-with-the-universe to isolate its moving parts conceptually but not rend them from the whole. As Bonaventure himself contends, we must see the parts, but always with an eye to the totality: “Whence just as no one can see the beauty of a song, unless her vision [aspectus] is brought to bear over its entire course [totum versum], so no one may see the beauty of the order and governance of the universe, unless she perceives its entirety.”577 Eriugena agrees:

“Now the procession of creatures and their return occur simultaneously in the account inquiring into them, with the result that they seem to be inseparable from each other, and no one can give a worthy and certain explanation concerning one absolutely without the insertion of the other–that is, concerning the procession without the return and collection, and conversely.”578

This dialectical method, by thinking with the cosmos, illuminates its basic structure and narrative movement. Eriugena writes:

“God, who alone creates all things, alone is ANARCHOS. That is, it is understood to be without beginning, because it alone is the principal cause of all things that are made from itself and through itself. And for this reason, it is also the end of all things that are from itself; all things desire [appetunt] it. It is therefore the beginning, the middle and the end [principium et medium et finis]: beginning, because all things that participate in essence are from it. It is the middle, because in it and through it they subsist and are moved. It is the end, because they are moved to it, seeking rest from motion to it and the stability of its perfection.”579

This narratival movement, Bonaventure says, the metaphysician can deduce from the structure of being itself, but only so far without revelation:

“The metaphysician however–even though she rises to the consideration of the principles of a created and particular substance to the universal and uncreated [substance], and to that very Being, so that she possesses the logic of beginning, middle, and final end–nevertheless [does not possess] the logic of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit.”580

This is because the middle, the center [medium], is not just a principle: it is a person. It is Christ “holding the center in all things,” in whom “are hidden all the treasures of God’s wisdom and knowledge.”581

So all things that are and can be known, the entire metaphysics of the universe, are rooted radically in the very special role and person of Christ, who is at the center of all things. As Eriugena says in one of his carminis, “all things will perceive in the sharp clarity of reason places and times filled within by God the Word, the whole world bearing the symbols of the birth of Christ.”582 So Bonaventure concludes: “The divine Word is every creature, because God is speaking.”583

A Possible Material Connection

This is just a taste, really. While there remains much more to explore, these parallels and the theologic undergirding them are certainly enough to incite interest in a possibly crucial link of intellectual reception. The lack of a material connection, of course, does linger. Some might even wonder about the availability of Eriugena’s texts, given the Periphyseon’s condemnation in 1225 at the council at Sens. However, this condemnation, rather than propose a paucity of availability of Eriugenian sources, may suggest just the opposite: to be condemned, thinkers must have been reading him (this was certainly the case with the Aristotelian corpus). In fact, we know they were. There resided in the library at the University of Paris a Dionysian textbook compiled in the second quarter of the 13th century.584 Known as the Opus maius, this text included among its five translations of the Dionysius’s Mystical Theology Eriugena’s own. Further, Eriugena’s writing makes up a good percentage of the marginalia, including quotes from the Periphyseon.585 What is crucial to note is that this was the Dionysian textbook at Paris, which Bonaventure himself certainly used. That the Seraphic Doctor read Eriugena seems incontrovertible.586

Yet there is a further connection that suggests the likelihood of the Irishman’s contribution to Bonaventure’s philosophy and theology. In the De mysterio Trinitatis and the De scientia Christi, Bonaventure utilizes a peculiar triple predication of infinity concerning the divine being (pro eo quod infinitum, eo quod infinitum divinum esse est infinitissime infinitum).587 J. Isaac Goff has pointed out that this triple formula is found in neither the Damascene nor the Cappadocians, but is present in Maximus. Further, it does not show up in any Latin sources preceding Bonaventure except one: Eriugena, who not only translates the formula from Maximus’s Ad Thalassium,588 but employs it three times in the Periphyseon.589 Moreover, the section containing the third use of the formula appears in the marginalia. Unfortunately for this study, the quote of the section begins ten lines below the actual triple predication, thus not providing an actual material connection. Even so, as James McEvoy has commented, this textbook facilitated Eriugena’s considerable influence “silent but real, upon the second Latin reception of the Mystical Theology.”590 This textbook also enjoyed a commodious dissemination, being the urtext of at least thirteen further manuscripts.

Conclusion

That the Irishman exercised some influence on the Seraphic Doctor’s philosophy and theology is to my mind indubitable. The parallels do not just represent a few corresponding concepts, but rather a shared theologic between these thinkers. The very anchors of cosmological and theological thought for these theologians both work and relate within their grand systems in strikingly similar, if not at times identical, ways. Many have spilled ink on the unique thought patterns and systemizations of Bonaventure and Eriugena respectively; perhaps more ink, precious though it may be, is worth spilling on whether Eriugena does not just echo in Bonaventure, but resound in him, and so by extension, the Franciscan intellectual tradition.

Bibliography

Allard, Guy H. “La technique de la chez Bonaventure.” In S. Bonaventura 1274–1974, edited by Jacques Guy Bougerol, 2:395–416. Rome: Collegio S. Bonaventura Grottaferrata, 1974.

Bonaventure. Doctoris seraphici S. Bonaventurae opera omnia. Edited by the Fathers of the Collegium S. Bonaventurae. Ad Claras Aquas (Quaracchi). 10 vols. Rome: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1882–1902.

Bougerol, J. Guy. Introduction to the Works of Bonaventure. Translated by José de Vinck. Paterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild, 1963.

Bowman, Leonard. “The Cosmic Exemplarism of Bonaventure.” The Journal of Religion 55/2 (1975) 181–98.

Goff, J. Isaac. Caritas in Primo: A Study of Bonaventure’s Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity. New Bedford, MA: Academy of the Immaculate, 2015.

Harrington, L. Michael. A Thirteenth-Century Textbook of Mystical Theology at the University of Paris: The Mystical Theology of Dionysius the Areopagite in Eriugena’s Latin Translation with the Scholia translated by Anastasius the Librarian and Excerpts from Eriugena’s Periphyseon. Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations 4. Paris: Peeters, 2004.

John Scottus Eriugena. Carmina. Edited and translated by Michael Herren. Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 12. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1993.

——. Homilia super ‘in principio erat verbum’ et Commentarius in evangelium Iohannis. Edited by Édouard A. Jeauneau. Corpus Christianorum 166. Turnhout: Brepols, 2008.

——. Periphyseon (De diuisione naturae). Edited by I. P. Sheldon-Williams and Édouard A. Jeauneau. Vols. 1–4. Scriptores Latini Hiberiae 13. Dublin: School of Celtic Studies, 1999–2009.

McEvoy, James. “John Scottus Eriugena and Thomas Gallus, Commentators on the Mystical Theology.” In History and Eschatology in John Scottus Eriugena and His Time: Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference of the Society for the Promotion of Eriugenian Studies, Maynooth and Dublin, August 16–20, 2000, edited by James McEvoy and Michael Dunne, 193–202. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2002.

Nichols, Aidan. Say It Is Pentecost: A Guide through Balthasar’s Logic. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001.

540. Bougerol, Introduction to the Works of Bonaventure, 41.
541. As noted by Nichols, Say It Is Pentecost, 97.
542. The influence of Dionysius on Bonaventure, while not ignored, is also woefully underdeveloped. For example, even basic concepts like illumination and hierarchy, both of which for Bonaventure are crucially Dionysian, have garnered little to no attention in the lore.
543. Collationes in Hexaëmeron (hereafter Hex) 1.17: Verbum ergo exprimit Patrem et res, quae per ipsum factae sunt, et principaliter ducit nos ad Patris congregantis unitatem; et secundum hoc est lignum vitae, quia per hoc medium redimus et vivificamur in ipso fonte vitae . . . hoc est medium metaphysicum reducens, et haec est tota nostra metaphysica: de emanatione, de exemplaritate, de consummatione, scilicet illuminari per radios spirituales et reduci ad summum. Et sic eris verus metaphysicus.

All references and quotes from Bonaventure’s corpus are from the standard Quaracchi critical edition, Doctoris seraphici S. Bonaventurae opera omnia, vols. 1–10, edited by the Fathers of the Collegium S. Bonaventurae (Ad Claras Aquas (Quaracchi): Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1882–1902). All translations are my own.

544. This is also called “cosmic exemplarism,” e.g., Bowman, “The Cosmic Exemplarism of Bonaventure,” 181–98. I find either appellation appropriate, but here I wish to highlight the centrality of Christ in Bonaventure’s exemplarist framework.
545. I Sent d. 27, p. 2, a. 1, q. 2, concl.: Et quia in ipso vis conceptiva concipit similitudinem, omnia circumplectentem sub intuitu uno sive aspectu, concipit sive generat unum Verbum, quod est similitudo Patris imitativa et similitudo rerum exemplativa et similitudo operativa; ita tenet quasi medium, et dicitur Pater operari per Verbum.
546. Hex 9.2: Quia Verbum et Patrem et se ipsum et Spiritum Sanctum exprimit et omnia alia.
547. Hex 3.2: Clavis ergo contemplationis est intellectus triplex, scilicet intellectus Verbi increati, per quod omnia producuntur; intellectus Verbi incarnati, per quod omnia reparantur; intellectus Verbi inspirati, per quod omnia revelantur. Nisi enim quis possit considerare de rebus, qualiter originantur, qualiter in finem reducuntur, et qualiter in eis refulgent Deus; intelligentiam habere non potest.
548. Periphyseon (hereafter PP) II 560A–B: Prius igitur quam mundus iste uisibilis in genera et species omnesque numeros sensibiles per generationem procederet ante tempora saecularia deus pater uerbum suum genuit in quo et per quem omnium naturarum primordiales causas perfectissimas creauit quae diuina prouidentia administrante mirabili quadam armonia processionibus suis per generationem numeris locorum et temporum generum quoque ac specierum multiplicibus differentiis hunc mundum uisibilem ab initio quo coepit usque ad finem.

All quotes from the Periphyseon are from critical edition of the Corpus Christianorum; however, I have utilized Periphyseon (De diuisione naturae), vols. 1–4, edited by I. P. Sheldon-Williams and Édouard A. Jeauneau, Scriptores Latini Hiberiae 13, which contains the same text. All translations are my own.

549. Homilia 7: Eo nascente ante omnia ex patre, omnia cum ipso et per ipsum facta sunt? Nam ipsius ex patre generatio ipsa est causarum omnium conditio omniumque quae ex causis in genera et species procedunt operatio et effectus. Per generationem quippe dei uerbi ex deo principio facta sunt omnia. Audi diuinum et ineffabile paradoxum, irreserabile secretum, inuisibile profundum, incomprehensibile mysterium. Per non factum, sed genitum, omnia facta, sed non genita.

All quotes for the Homilia text are from Jeauneau’s critical edition Iohannis Scotti seu Eriugena: Homilia super ‘in principio erat verbum’ et Commentarius in evangelium Iohannis, in Corpus Christianorum 166. All translations are my own.

550. Homilia 10. However, it is worth noting that there are pericopes in which Eriugena appears to vacillate on this question, e.g. PP I 448B, where he considers the possibility that the ideas are in fact the Divine Essence itself, which he navigates through his theology of theophany. This could imply that Eriugena had more nuanced thoughts on this question.
551. De scientia Christi, q. 3, in toto, but particularly the conclusion.
552. PP I 446C: “principalia exempla.”
553. Eriugena too speaks of God as the “Principal Exemplar.” See for example PP II 585C–586C, where Eriugena speaks of the soul as the “image” of the Exemplar, and the body as “the image of the soul.” This is reminiscent of the vestige/image/similitude distinction found in Bonaventure’s corpus, such as the Itinerarium mentis in Deum. It is perhaps significant to note that this passage from Eriugena directly precedes one of the “triple infinity formulation” passage, which I discuss below as a possible material link between the Irishman and the Seraphic Doctor.
554. A common name for the Word in Bonaventure and Eriugena.
555. Bonaventure distinguishes three modes in which the ideas subsist: 1) seminally, where they act as the principle causes of material realities; 2) intellectually, the mode in which they inhabit the created, rational mind; and 3) ideally, their essential but rationally distinct inhabitance of the divine essence. See De reductione artium ad theologiam (hereafter DR 20).
556. Itinerarium mentis ad Deum (hereafter Itin) II.8: Si ergo omnia cognoscibilia habent sui speciem generare, manifeste proclamant, quod in illis tanquam in speculis videri potest aeterna generatio Verbi, Imaginis et Filii a Deo Patre aeternaliter emanantis.
557. Ibid., III.3: Huiusmodi igitur illationis necessitas non venit ab existentia rei in materia, quia est contingens, nec ab existentia rei in anima, quia tunc esset fictio, si non esset in re: venit igitur ab exemplaritate in arte aeterna, secundum quam res habent aptitudinem et habitudinem ad invicem secundum illius aeternae artis repraesentationem.
558. PP III 689B: Diuina natura . . . in suis theophaniis accipit apparere ex occultissimis naturae suae sinibus . . .
559. PP II 576D–577A: Ut enim ex inferioribus sensibilium rerum imagines quas Greci PHANTACIAC uocant anima recipit ita ex superioribus, hoc est primordialibus causis, cognitiones quae a Grecis THEOPHANIAI, a Latinis diuinae apparitiones solent appellari sibi ipsi infigit et per ipsas quandam de deo notitiam percipit, per primas causas dico.
560. PP III 681A: At uero in suis theophaniis incipiens apparere ueluti ex nihilo in aliquid dicitur procedere, et quae proprie super omnem essentiam existimatur proprie quoque in omni essentia cognoscitur ideoque omnis uisibilis et inuisibilis creatura theophania, id est diuina apparitio, potest appellari.
561. “Expression” is a technical term for Bonaventure in particular; see DSC qq. 2 and 3.
562. Commentaria Sententiarum Liber I (hereafter I Sent) prol. I, 2a: Sicut in circulo ultimum coniungitur principio, sic in incarnatione
563. DR 20: Per similem igitur rationem potest argui, quod summa perfectio et nobilissima in universo esse non possit, nisi natura, in qua sunt rationes seminales, et natura, in qua sunt rationes intellectuales, et natura, in qua rationes ideales, simul concurrant in unitatem personae, quod factum est in Filii Dei incarnatione. Praedicat igitur tota naturalis philosophia per habitudinem proportionis Dei Verbum natum et incarnatum, ut idem sit alpha et omega, natum scilicet in principio et ante tempora, incarnatum vero in fine saeculorum.
564. II Sent d. 17, a. 2, q. 1, concl.
565. Brev VII.7.2: Ut ergo manifestaretur potentia, ad sui ipsius laudem, gloriam et honorem omnia produxit de nihilo, faciens aliquid prope nihil, scilicet materiam corporalem, et aliquid prope se, scilicet substantiam spiritualem, et simul haec iungens in uno homine in unitate naturae et personae, scilicet rationalem animam et corporalem.

Cf. De perfectione evangelica q.1, a.1, concl.

566. Cf. III Sent d. 19, a. 2, q. 2, concl. Though it should be noted that the inverse could just as properly–and perhaps more properly–stated, that the human is the mediator of Creation because the Incarnated Christ is the Mediator.
567. See Maximus, Ambiguum 41, especially 2–3.
568. PP IV 749A: nam in homine omnia facta sunt.
569. That is, Maximus.
570. PP II 536A–B: Ad hoc igitur quantum ex praedicti magistri sermonibus datur intelligi inter primordiales rerum causas homo ad imaginem dei factus est ut in eo omnis creatura et intelligibilis et sensibilis ex quibus ueluti diuersis extremittibus compositus unum inseparabile fieret est ut esset medietas atque adunatio omnium creaturarum.
571. II Sent d. 17, a. 1, q. 3, ad 6: Et post omnia producta est anima humana tanquam finis omnium et consummatio.
572. PP IV 782C–D: Proinde post mundi uisibilis ornatus narrationem introducitur homo, ueluti omnium conclusio, ut intelligeretur quod omnia quae ante ipsum condita narrantur, in ipso uniuersaliter comprehendantur.
573. Homilia 21: Non propter se ipsum uerbum caro factum est, sed propter nos, qui non nisi per uerbi carnem potuissemus in dei filios transmutari. Solus descendit, cum multis ascendit. De hominibus facit deos qui de deo fecit hominem . . . hoc est, naturam nostram possedit, ut suae naturae nos participes faceret.
574. III Sent d. 1, a. 2, q. 2, concl.: Completus etiam est totius humanae naturae appetitus, dum per opus incarnationis nobilissima idoneitas, quae erat in humana natura, secundum quam unibilis erat divinae, ad actum perfectum reducitur.
575. Guy H. Allard is an excellent resource for understanding the technical meaning of reductio in Bonaventure’s thought. Reductio is not a diminution but rather the intensification and expatiation of a thing by drawing it deeper into its ontological source. As Allard explains: “Une première observation s’impose qui surprendra certes plus d’un logicien moderne: la reductio conduit toujours d’un pole negative à un pole positif. Cette loi générale revêt une double forme: 1) la reductio reconduit de ce qui est imparfait à ce qui est parfait, 2) de ce qui est incomplet à ce qui est complet. C’est pourquoi elle est une montée, une ascension; loin d’être un processus de déperdition, de raréfaction ou d’anéantissement, la reductio assure au contraire une amplification de l’intelligibilité et une ouverture de plus en plus grande du champ épistémologique” (Allard, “La technique de la chez Bonaventure,” 395–416).
576. 1 Sent d. 31, p.2, dub. 7: Et quoniam Deus Pater est principium Filii, et Filius principium omnium, ita quod Filius prodicitur et producit . . . sed Pater . . . cum sit innascibilis . . . ideo dicitur fontale principium, a quo omnia et in quem omnia per Filium reducuntur . . . et propterea Filio appropriatur reductio.
577. Brev, prol. 2: Unde sicut nullus potest videre pulcritudinem carminis, nisi aspectus eius feratur super totum versum, sic nullus videt pulcritudinem ordinis et regiminis universi, nisi eam totam speculetur.
578. PP II 529A: Processio nanque creaturarum earundemque reditus ita simul rationi occurrunt eas inquirenti ut a se inuicem inseparabiles esse uideantur, et nemo de una absolute sine alterius insertione, hoc est de processione sine reditu et collectione et couersim, dignum quid ratumque potest explanare.
579. PP I 451C–D: Praedicatarum itaque naturae diuisionum prima differentia nobis visa est in eam quae creat et non creatur. Nec immerito, quia talis naturae species de deo solo recte praedicatur, qui solus omnia creans ANARXOC, hoc est sine principio, intelligitur esse, quia principalis causa omnium quae ex ipso et per ipsum facta sunt solus est, ac per hoc et omnium quae ex se sunt finis est; ipsum enim omnia appetunt. Est igitur principium et medium et finis: principium quidem, quia ex se sunt omnia quae essentiam participant; medium autem, quia in ipso et per ipsum subsistent atque mouentur; finis uero, quia ad ipsum mouentur quietem motus sui suaeque perfectionis stabilitatem quaerentia.
580. Hex 1.13: Metaphysicus autem, licet assurgat ex consideratione principiorum substantiae creatae et particularis ad universalem et increatem et ad illud esse, ut habet rationem principii, medii, et finis ultimi, non tamen in ratione Patris et Filii et Spiritus sancti.
581. Hex 1.10; cf. Colossians 2:3.
582. John Scottus Eriugena, Carmina, 25: Intrans armoniam rerum, ducente sophia//omnia perspiciet rationis acumine claro//intus farta deo verbo loca tempora, totum//mundum gestantem nascentis symbola Christi.
583. Commentarius in librum Ecclesiastes 1, 11, q. 2, concl.: Verbum divinum est omnis creatura, quia deum loquitur.
584. Paris, BnF Lat. 17341.
585. A partial translation and notes on the marginalia, with introductory material, can be found in L. Michael Harrington’s edition A Thirteenth-Century Textbook of Mystical Theology at the University of Paris. See also McEvoy, “John Scottus Eriugena and Thomas Gallus, Commentators on the Mystical Theology,” 193–202.
586. Luke V. Togni, currently dissertating at Marquette University, is specifically analyzing Bonaventure’s reception of the medieval Dionysian tradition, and highlights in particular the way in which Eriugena’s identification of the Trinity as hierarchy and even as proto-cult anticipates Bonaventure’s fully realized doctrine of hierarchy. Togni and I concur that the availability of Eriugena’s Celestial Commentary in the compilation of texts known as the Opus maius (BnF Lat. 17341) in Paris offers an explanation for Bonaventure’s unique description of God as the sui pius cultor (Hex 21.7–8). Bougerol shows that Bonaventure did tend to favor Eriugena’s translation of Dionysius, along with that of John Sarrazin, which he speculates came from “hybrid source . . . a worked-over transcription of Scottus-Sarrazin” (Bougerol, Introduction, 39–48). The presence of BnF Lat. 17341 makes this speculation less likely.
587. De mysterio Trinitatis q. 3, a. 1, ad 13. See Goff, Caritas in Primo, 248–50.
588. Qs 56, 60, and 63.
589. PP I 517B; II 525A and 586C.
590. McEvoy, “Eriugena and Thomas Gallus,” 201.”