Reading the World Rightly and Squarely: Bonaventure's Doctrine of the Cardinal Virtues
In an article concerning the seven deadly sins, Siegfried Wenzel distinguishes one model for the traditional topic of vices and virtues which he calls ‘ cosmological’ or ‘ symbolic.’ This model develops the idea that ‘ man is a septenary,’ a composite of three powers of the soul and four elements of...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
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| Published: |
Cambridge University Press
1983
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| In: |
Traditio
Year: 1983, Volume: 39, Pages: 183-218 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | In an article concerning the seven deadly sins, Siegfried Wenzel distinguishes one model for the traditional topic of vices and virtues which he calls ‘ cosmological’ or ‘ symbolic.’ This model develops the idea that ‘ man is a septenary,’ a composite of three powers of the soul and four elements of the body. The association of the three theological virtues with the three powers of the soul and the four cardinal virtues with the four elements of the body was current in the twelfth century. In the first half of the thirteenth century, Robert Grosseteste developed the analogy in the context of a metaphysics of light, somewhat unexpectedly in a treatise on confession. The ‘connection between virtues and vices on one hand and physiology on the other,’ Wenzel remarks, ‘is an area that needs much further study.’ Perhaps the fullest development of the cosmological or symbolic model of the virtues was made in the last half of the thirteenth century by Bonaventure. Indeed, for him the cardinal virtues (the concern of this study) are the four poles of the created universe. |
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| ISSN: | 2166-5508 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Traditio
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0362152900009612 |