Learning to Read

Complementary to all theological considerations of divine writing – sacra pagina – are those of divine reading, known in the Christian Tradition as lectio divina. Through a close reading of St. Bonaventure’s Incendium Amoris (De Triplici Via) this article seeks to elucidate the author’s understanding of the Christian’s act of reading, especially the reading of the biblical text. Between the eleventh and the late thirteenth centuries, the metaphysically rich sense of lectio regnant in the monastic environment goes into decline. In ascendancy is a lectio attenuated to a mere instrument, whether scholarly or spiritual in application. Standing somewhere near the apex of this watershed, Bonaventure understood the act of reading the Word of God as constitutive of a real, vital, personal relationship between the divine, living author and the human reader. Notwithstanding his scholastic contributions, Bonaventure remains essentially faithful to the understanding of lectio as practiced in a liturgically saturated monastic milieu

Epistemology · Metaphysics · Theology · Medieval European Literature and History · Medieval Literature and History · Medieval Philosophy and Theology · Philosophy

• A history of the Franciscan Order from its origins to the year 1517

  John R H Moorman•A history of the Franciscan Order…•1968

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