Dante, Desire, and the Epic Quest: Part Two
Synderesis and the Itinerarium Mentis in Saint Bonaventure
This is part 2 of a 3 part series on Dante and desire.
This first part considered Dante’s Commedia as a work of quest literature with the hero driven forward by desire.
Part 2 explores the concept of “synderesis” in Bonaventure—synderesis an almost erotic spark at “the summit of the mind.”
Part 3 will argue that Bonaventure’s understanding of synderesis is at the heart of Dante’s Commedia and that desire is the key to Dante’s poetic structure and vision of sanctification.
In chapter one of the Itinerarium Mentis Saint Bonaventure writes:
Corresponding therefore to the six steps in the ascent to God, there are six gradated powers of the soul, whereby we ascend from the lowest things to the highest things, from the things outside us to those that are within, and from the temporal to the eternal. These six powers are the senses, imagination, reason, understanding, intelligence, and the summit of the mind or the spark of synderesis (IM, 6-7).
There is some debate about the origin of the word synderesis as it was adopted in Christianity. It comes either from the Greek συντηρέω where it means “to preserve together,” or συνείδησις “which is the standard correlate in Greek Patristic literature for the Latin conscientia,” or conscience. Bonaventure’s commentators attribute his knowledge and use of the word to Jerome’s Commentary on Ezekiel, in which Jerome describes a certain Neoplatonist interpretation of Ezekiel thus: “syneidesis….This is the spark of conscience, which, even in the breast of Cain after he was ejected from paradise, is not extinguished.”
It is striking to note that, given its pride of place in Bonaventure’s assessment of the hierarchy of human powers—he calls it the “summit of the mind,”—synderesis only appears explicitly once in the Itinerarium Mentis in the passage quoted above. But according to Bonaventure’s definition, synderesis operates throughout the Itinerarium Mentis as the force propelling the human soul toward God.
When Bonaventure writes “the spark of synderesis,” we can observe him gesturing toward St. Jerome’s phrase “the spark of conscience,” although it is clear that Bonaventure means much more by synderesis than, if I may call it this, mere conscience. Douglas Langston notes that in Bonaventure’s Commentary on the Sentences, Book II, distinction 39, he “places conscience squarely within the rational faculty, specifying that it is part of practical reason since it is connected to the performance of actions.” Conscience prompts specific decisions given a set of circumstances that include time; it is both practical and rational.
Langston continues, “[o]n the other hand, he [Bonaventure] places synderesis in the affective part of human beings, for he regards synderesis as that which stimulates us to the good.” The distinction here is between reason and affect: practical decisions and a primal inclination toward the good. Etienne Gilson’s authoritative 1965 study, The Philosophy of Saint Bonaventure, describes synderesis as “an innate natural gift” residing in the will. He calls it a weight...
which directs the will spontaneously towards what it is to desire. Synderesis is not the cause of every movement and inclination of our will in general, but only of the inclinations which bear it towards the good that we desire for itself...it does not make itself part of our faculties of desire and action, but it moves them, watches over them, directs and corrects them….What it cannot impose upon the will, it holds up before the eyes of conscience and it turns into a remorse that will not be still. Synderesis is in the highest part of the superior region of the soul; it is its primary impulse towards the good, hence inseparable from it, essential, indestructible and infallible; like a rider in the saddle it is ever above the soul, ever guiding it; it falls only with the soul as a rider is brought down with his horse.
Synderesis is responsible for moving desire and action toward the good. While certainly not divorced from the operation of reason, Bonaventure’s synderesis nevertheless privileges the affective over the rational.
Recall Jean Leclercq’s distinction between monastic and scholastic modes of thought. For Leclerc, the distinction between the affective and the rational corresponds to the distinction between the monastic and scholastic. Leclercq characterizes monasticism chiefly as affective in its expression, whereas scholasticism is chiefly rational. In his discussion of desire, for him always a characteristic of the monastic or affective, Leclercq glosses this distinction further when he writes that “contemplation is essentially an act of faith, hope, and love. It is not, therefore, the end result of a discursive activity of the intelligence, it is not the reward of learning acquired through study, and it does not result in an increase of speculative knowledge.” There is gentle polemic, I think, in Leclercq’s emphasis on contemplation as opposed to study and it effectively characterizes the distinction between an affective approach and a rational one.
There is gentle polemic, I think, in Leclercq’s emphasis on contemplation as opposed to study and it effectively characterizes the distinction between an affective approach and a rational one.
Some have made much of this difference between the predominantly affective Bonaventure and the predominantly rational, at least in terms of his legacy, Thomas Aquinas. And to be sure, as regards synderesis, there are distinctions between the thought of Bonaventure and Thomas. For example, Thomas describes synderesis as a “special natural habit” and a “first practical principle” that is the inborn standard by which we judge the good.
For Bonaventure, however, synderesis is a natural gift that resides in the will and operates chiefly on our desire. But too much has been made of their differences. If we consider what both philosophers say synderesis does in the life of an individual we can identify a profound unity. For both Bonaventure and Thomas, synderesis guides the conscience toward the good. Whether of natural or supernatural origin, rooted in the intellect, or presiding at the summit of our human powers, synderesis is never mistaken—it is an infallible attraction to the supreme good.
Dante himself addresses the question of opposition between Thomas and Bonaventure, or perhaps more broadly speaking, between the rational and mystical dispositions within the church. To begin with, Dante encounters Thomas and Bonaventure in the same sphere of the heavens, the sun, which makes difficult a hierarchical favoring of one over the other. Then, in Paradiso XI, Dante shows Thomas narrating the life of St. Francis of Assisi, the famous founder of the Franciscans, the order to which Bonaventure belonged. Alternately, canto XII has Bonaventure, the Franciscan, recounting St. Dominic’s hagiography—Dominic the founder of the Dominican order of which Thomas Aquinas was a member. As if to emphasize the point for those of us too intrigued by the salacious details of difference in theological minutiae to notice the happy equilibrium between the two, Dante has Thomas reassure us that Francis and Dominic are “two princes” ordained by God “to serve as guides…
One was all seraphic in his ardor, The other, by his wisdom, was on earth Resplendent with cherubic light. I shall speak of one, since praising one, Whichever one we choose, is to speak of both, For they labored to a single end. (Par, XI.32-42)
Following Dante’s interpretation of them as presented in Paradiso, there is possible an accord between theology and mysticism, reason and affect, Thomas and Bonaventure, that is important in opening to our view Bonaventure’s role in the Commedia, a poem that is often read as exclusively Thomistic.
If Dante’s explicit statements on the matter leave any doubt, Erich Auerbach addresses the issue from the slightly different angle of poetic coherence in Dante. Auerbach prods the notion that in Dante there are “free-standing” theological or “didactic elements…[that] are unpoetic and should be distinguished from [the Commedia’s] actual poetry,” as if the theology were an ill-fitting aftermarket addition to the mysticism and poetics of the Commedia.
Auerbach responds, “[o]n the contrary, it cannot be emphasized too strongly that there are no poetic parts of the Comedy that are freestanding in this way, since for Dante, poetic beauty is identical with the vision of divine truth. This is why genuine knowledge is as beautiful as real beauty is true.” And this is why Thomas and Bonaventure share a privileged state in Paradiso: Dante’s vision of a formal union of the true and beautiful finds expression in the brotherhood of the saintly scholastic and mystic. My proposition that Dante uses specifically Bonaventure’s synderesis—affective rather than rational—hardly destabilizes the equanimity with which the poet presents Bonaventure and Thomas.
In fact, given Bonaventure’s definition of synderesis, we understand that the entire project of the Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, that is the Journey of the Mind to God, is premised on synderesis as its instigator and propellant. One could call the Itinerarium Mentis an anatomy of synderesis as each chapter considers its effect in a different level of creation or arena of consciousness.
In Chapter One “The Steps in the Ascent to God” Bonaventure introduces us to synderesis; then, Chapter Two, “The Consideration of God in His Vestiges in this Visible World,” shows synderesis in action as pertains to the visible world; Chapter Three features synderesis as it operates in our natural powers. The pattern remains consistent throughout the Itinerarium Mentis, and significantly, the pattern is that of an itinerarium, a journey. That is to say, it is a special function of synderesis that it provokes one to action through its affective power. It stokes the desire that stimulates the journey toward God. For a book that anatomizes synderesis, what better figure or form than that of the itinerarium, journey, or quest to demonstrate synderesis in action?
We can imagine Bonaventure studying the longing that haunts the epic tradition of the quest or journey that we discussed earlier and identifying synderesis as the displaced source of that longing. Bonaventure’s canny use of the quest form in a Christian context featuring synderesis is less an adaptation or appropriation of a form than it is a contraction or distillation of the form to its essence.
This is part two of a three part series. You can find part one here.