BONAGRAZIA DA BERGAMO. - Franciscan, born probably at Bergamo (in the world Buoncortese), he entered among the Friars Minor as a lay brother shortly before 1310, died on 19 June 1340.
A doctor in utroque iure, he was very erudite and an excellent controversialist. As the question of the literal observance of the Rule of St. Francis, to the exclusion of any pontifical declaration, was being bitterly agitated between the Spirituals and the Friars of the Community, the Friars of the Community entrusted to him, although he was still almost a novice in the religious life, the task of defending its principles against the Spirituals, especially against Ubertino of Casale (v.) before the Curia of Avignon (1309-12). To this end he therefore composed various writings, among which the most notable is the one entitled: Articuli probationum contra fratrem Ubertinum de Casali, composed toward the end of the controversy, ca. 1319 (ed. Baluze-Mansi, Miscellanea, II, Lucca 1761, pp. 271-79). Since Clement V had exempted the Spirituals from the jurisdiction of the Order, B. protested publicly and vigorously against that exemption. For this act he was imprisoned and exiled to a convent (31 July 1312). When the pope died in 1314, B. fled from his exile and again championed before Pope John XXII the cause of the Community against the Spirituals. He also took part in the trial against Bernard Délicieux (v.).
When the controversy over the poverty of Christ and the Apostles began, B. published (in 1322) his Tractatus de paupertate Christi et Apostolorum (cf. L. Oliger in Arch. Franc. Hist., 22 [1929], pp. 317-85, 487-511), in which he maintained that « Inseretum est asserere quod Christus et Apostoli habuerunt aliquid in speciali vel in communi ». John XXII, having resolved against B. and the decisions of the Franciscan general chapter of Perugia of Pentecost 1322, published the bull Ad conditorem canonum, by which he renounced the ownership on the part of the Holy See of the goods possessed in the name of the Franciscan Order.
B., in his capacity as procurator elected by the Order, protested in public consistory against the papal decision (14 Jan. 1323) with his Appellatio Bonagratiae contra bullam «Ad conditorem canonum» in concistorio papae porrecta (ed. Eubel in Bullarium francisc., 5 [1898], pp. 237-46, n.). For this protest he was again imprisoned, and when on 12 Nov. 1323 the Pope published the bull Cum inter nonnullos, which declared heretical the doctrine of the upholders of the absolute poverty of Christ and his Apostles (Denz-U, 294), B. feigned to submit outwardly, but with Michael of Cesena (v.) and William of Ockham (v.) he prepared his flight from Avignon, to the court of Louis the Bavarian, at Pisa (26 May 1328). Struck by the papal excommunication, he passed, still under the protection of Louis, from Pisa to Munich (1330), where he lived until his death, fighting bitterly, and with a heretical spirit, against the Pope and the Franciscan Order which had disowned him.
He sided with the antipope Nicholas V and died without having been reconciled with the Church and the Order.
The list of the numerous works of a polemical and canonical character is given by L. Oliger: Fr. Bonagratia da Bergamo et eius Tractatus de Christi et apostolorum paupertate (in Arch. Franc. Hist., 22 [1929], pp. 304-17). The following are more notable, besides those already cited: among the numerous polemical works, the Protestatio... contra exemptionem Spiritualibus concessam et denuntatio doctrinae fr. Petri Ioannis Olivi (March 1311, ed. by Fr. Ehrle in Archiv für Lit. und Kirchengeschichte, 2 [1886], pp. 365-74); the Clypeus, in defense of Michael of Cesena (ed. by A. Mercati in Arch. Fr. Hist., 20 [1927], pp. 271-74, 289-91); the Appellatio contra Ioannis XXII errores de visione beatifica, unpublished, composed at Munich on 10 Apr. 1332, and the Consilium Bonagratiae de invarimento Ludovico Bavaro non oboediendo, composed ca. 1338. Among the works of canon law mention should be made of the Casus papales et episcopales cum explanatione praedictorum, preserved in cod. 645 of the Municipal library of Assisi.
Bibliography7 works
Umile Bonzi da Genova