The Created World as a Creator’s Vestigium in St. Bonaventure’s Aesthetics

Abstract

The conspicuous Franciscan thinker Saint Bonaventure of Bagnoregio develops his personal Aesthetics in his book Itinerarium mentis in Deum (1259). This consists essentially in an ascent of man to God through three successive phases, each of them divided into two levels. This article seeks to analyze the first of those three phases in which our author structures his aesthetic system, a phase that we could call Bonaventurian Immanent Aesthetics. In this immanent phase, the human being can reach the knowledge of God, if he considers the material beings of the created world as vestiges that visibly reveal the invisible presence of God who created them. To achieve such a discovery, the human being must consider through apprehension, delectation, and judgment the physical qualities of material creatures, to perceive them as traces or vestiges of the Creator.

Keywords

• aesthetics
• created world
• senses
• material beings
• vestige
• analogy
• creator god.