Medieval Soul Journey

Author: [Italian] Bonaventure Pivin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-05-01
Features: Bonaventure, with his extraordinary leadership talent and devout religious practice, won the respect of his contemporaries and later generations with his pure, humble, enthusiastic, and steadfast character. In Bonaventure, there was no split between the religious life of a Christian and the spiritual life of a theologian and philosopher; the two were completely integrated. Bonaventure described six stages of the human soul's ascent to God. The human soul has six faculties: sensation, imagination, intellect, reason, understanding, and the summit of the soul, which is the flash of conscience. The description of these faculties corresponds to the six different levels of the soul's ascent to God. "Therefore, according to the six stages of ascent to God, the stages of our soul's faculties are also six: sensation, imagination, intellect, reason, understanding, and the summit of the soul or the spark of divinity, through which we ascend from the bottom to the peak, from the outside to the inside, and from the temporary to the eternal. These faculties are rooted in our nature, twisted by sin, transformed by grace, purified by justice, tempered by knowledge, and perfected by wisdom."