Saint Bonaventure's 'Conferences on the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit': A translation and commentary

This dissertation contains a translation into English of the Conferences on the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit by St. Bonaventure (1217–1274), along with background information and an interpretation of the work. Chapter 1 of the dissertation contains a survey of the historical background to Bonaventure's life, the history of the Franciscan order, and challenges Bonaventure faced as minister general. In Chapter 2, the development of the theme of the seven gifts in exegetical and theological tradition is discussed. This theme emerged in the Patristic era as an exegesis of Isaiah 11:2–3, and was treated systematically in the Middle Ages. The seven gifts came to be related to the seven virtues and the seven beatitudes. Chapter 2 also contains an explanation of the place of the seven gifts within Bonaventure's theological synthesis, and an exposition of Bonaventure's theology of the seven gifts as this is expressed in his early Sentence Commentary . Chapter 3 contains the translation with some explanatory notes. Chapter 4 contains an interpretation of the Conferences on the Seven Gifts (given in 1268 at Paris) under three heads: the style and character of the work, with an emphasis on its structure; issues and themes Bonaventure discusses; some of the salient symbols in the work. The structure is discussed as an example of divisio textus in medieval preaching. Among the issues and themes discussed are exhortations to teachers and leaders, humility, the value of knowledge, pneumatology, ecclesiology, and Bonaventure's responses to secular criticism and Averroism. One of the symbols discussed is the “strong woman,” based on Proverbs 31. At the end an hypothesis is offered that in these Conferences Bonaventure is experimenting with a theology of history. Some suggestions are also offered for retrieving the theme of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit in contemporary theology.