Caritas In Primo

In the mid-1250s, shortly after becoming a master of theology at the University of Paris, Bonaventure wrote a series of disputed questions on the Mystery of the Trinity. Surprisingly, this disputation fell out of memory after Peter John of Olivi (d. 1298) last mentioned it. The text was only rediscovered in the early 1870s by the Franciscan scholar Fidelis a Fanna, within a historical context quite different from Bonaventure’s. Scholarship, following this rediscovery, has not produced a single study on the entirety of the text, and where the text is discussed, historical context is only a marginal concern. This study attempts to begin to fill both of these lacunae. I first establish the historical background and context in which the De Mysterio Trinitatis was composed. Then, on this basis, I offer an interpretive analysis of the entire text, paying special attention to the theological and philosophical matters that would have motivated Bonaventure. I argue that Bonaventure, as the newl