The Journey of the Mind into God

A short spiritual treatise written in 1259, when Bonaventure, then minister general of the Franciscans, withdrew to Mount La Verna, where Francis of Assisi was said to have seen a six-winged seraph. Bonaventure reads the six wings as six steps by which the mind rises to God. In chapters 1 and 2 it sees God through traces (vestigia) in the sensible world, both outside us and as they enter through the senses. In chapters 3 and 4 it turns inward to find God's image in its own powers of memory, intellect and will, first in their natural state and then as renewed by grace. Chapters 5 and 6 look above the mind, contemplating God under the name Being, which Bonaventure says is the first thing the intellect grasps, and under the name Good, which by nature gives itself and grounds the Trinity. Chapter 7 describes a final passing over, beyond the intellect, into a peace of love, following Christ crucified.

It compresses a whole medieval theory of knowledge and spirituality into a few pages, showing how the senses, the mind and love were thought to lead step by step towards God.