BONAGRAZIA da BERGAMO. — Franciscan, born probably in Bergamo (in the world Buoncortese), he entered the Friars Minor as a lay brother shortly before 1310 and died on 19 June 1340.
A doctor in utroque iure, he was highly learned and an excellent controversialist. As the dispute between the Spirituals and the Friars of the Community over the literal observance of the Rule of St. Francis, excluding any papal declaration, grew increasingly bitter, the Friars of the Community entrusted him—although he was still almost a novice in religious life—with the task of defending their principles against the Spirituals, Ubertino da Casale (v.) before the Curia of Avignon (1309–12). To this end he composed various writings, the most notable of which is 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). When Clement V exempted the Spirituals from the jurisdiction of the Order, B. publicly and vigorously protested against this exemption. For this he was imprisoned and exiled to a convent (31 July 1312). After the pope’s death in 1314, B. fled from his exile and once again advocated before Pope John XXII the cause of the Community against the Spirituals. He also took part Delicieux (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, angered by B. and by the decisions of the Franciscan general chapter held at Pentecost 1322 in Perugia, published the bull Ad conditorem canonum, by which he renounced the Holy See’s ownership of the goods held 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 January 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 November 1323, the Pope published the bull Cum inter nonnullos, which declared heretical the doctrine of those who upheld the absolute poverty of Christ and his Apostles (Denz-U, 294), B. outwardly pretended to submit, Michele da Cesena (v.) and Guglielmo Ockan (v.) prepared his flight from Avignon to Pisa, where Ludovico il Bavaro was staying (26 May 1328). Struck by papal excommunication, he went, still under Ludovico’s protection, from Pisa to Munich in Bavaria (1330), where he lived until his death, continuing to struggle bitterly, and in a heretical spirit, against the Pope and the Franciscan Order, which had repudiated him.
He supported the antipope Niccolò V. and died without having been reconciled with the Church and the Order.
A list of his numerous polemical and canonical works 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 the more notable, in addition to 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 Michele da 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 April 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.