Abstract

Edgar De Bruyne divided medieval definitions of beauty into two categories: l'esthetique musicale and l'esthetique de la luminiere. In the first, beauty is a type of proportion. In the second, beauty is a property of the ideas or formae. They are beautiful per se. Their presence within beautiful things makes them beautiful, not the proportion of parts. De Bruyne placed Bonaventure within l'esthetique musicale. Umberto Eco, et alii, placed Bonaventure within l'esthetique de la luminiere . De Bruyne is right. Bonaventure defines beauty as a type of proportion between one thing and another, not the presence of the formae within them. ;Bonaventure is also the first to introduce the distinction between the beautiful, the agreeable, and the good. Bonaventure argues that the mind perceives an object through the five senses, delights in its beauty, agreeableness, or goodness, and then judges it, that is, abstracts the formae from the sensible species, in order to know it. The delight in beautiful things, as well as agreeable and good things, is a stimulus to know and love them, not an end in itself. ;Bonaventure applies these categories in a series of spiritual treatises designed to further the knowledge of and love for Christ crucified: the Tree of Life, the Soliloquy, the Return of the Arts to Theology, the Breviloquium, the Mind's Journey into God, and the longer Life of St. Francis . Bonaventure asks his readers to use both their physical senses and their spiritual senses, the soul's senses for the presence of God within itself, to delight in Christ's beauty, agreeableness, and goodness, and then to know him and love him