Aquinas, Bonaventure, and the Scholastic Culture of Medieval Paris

Randall B. Smith is the Scanlon Foundation Endowed Professor of Theology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. He is the author of How to Read a Sermon by Thomas Aquinas.

I. Preliminaries: 1. Preaching and Principia at the University of Paris; 2. The basic elements of the thirteenth century “modern sermon”; 3. Principia and Sermo Modernus; II. Thomas Aquinas: The Logician Who Learned to Preach: 4. Rigans montes: Thomas's inception principium; 5. Hi est liber: Thomas's Resumptio; 6. Thomas's student prologues; 7. After inception: early and late prologues; 8. I have seen the Lord: Thomas's prototreptic prologue to his commentary on the Gospel of John; 9. Aquinas, Sermo Modern-style preaching, and biblical commentary; III. Bonaventure: The Scholastic with the Soul of a Poet: 10. Bonaventure's inception Principium: Omnium artifex; 11. Bonaventure's Resumptio: an early attempt to think through the hierarchy of the sciences; 12. Searching the depths of the Lombard: the prologue to Bonaventure's Sentences commentary; 13. Exalting our understanding: the prologue to Bonaventure's Commentary on the Gospel of John; 14. The spirit of the Lord is upon me: the prologue to Bonaventure's Commentary on the Gospel of Luke; 15. Bonaventure, Sermo Modernus-style preaching, and biblical commentary; 16. A master's praise of scripture: the prologue to Bonaventure's Breviloquium; 17. The union of Paris and Assisi: the prologues to Bonaventure's later Collations; 18. The Reduction of the Arts to Theology redux: the prologue to the Collations on the Six Days of Creation; 19: Summary and concluding remarks.