BONET, NICOLAS. – Minorite theologian, born probably at Tours in the last decades of the 13th century, died before 27 October 1343. A student at the University of Paris, he obtained there the academic degrees up to the master’s degree and taught there for several years. He is called « Sacrae Theologiae Magister » in a papal document of 1342, and his admirers called him « Doctor profusus, pacificus, imaginativus ». It is not certain that he was a direct disciple of Scoto; nevertheless, he followed several of his doctrines and always counted him among his preferred masters.
He must have enjoyed great prestige among the Parisian theologians if, as is generally held, Clement V (1304–15) commissioned him to compose the Tractatus de conceptione B. M. V., and Philip VI of France appointed him (1333), together with other masters, to examine the doctrine of John XXII concerning the beatific vision. Already a royal chaplain, in 1338 Benedict XII sent him as head of a papal delegation to the Great Khan of the Tartars. It does not seem that he was able to fulfill his task. On 27 November 1342 he was appointed bishop of Malta, but his episcopate was very brief. He left numerous philosophical and theological writings. We may mention the Aristotelian commentaries in Metaphysicum, in Philosophiam naturalem, in Praedicamenta (Venice 1505), the Theologia naturalis (ibid. 1505), and other writings attributed to him, such as the Formalitate in via Scoti (ibid. 1489) and the Postilla in Genesim (ibid. 1515). B. exercised a notable influence on later scholastics. It does not seem that he was the originator of that singular opinion known as Bonesism, according to which Christ’s words « Mulier, ecce filius tuus » would have effected a kind of transubstantiation, making St. John Mary’s natural son.
BIB.: Chronica XXIV Generalium, in Anal. Franc., III, Quaracchi 1897, p. 530; L. Wadding, Annales Ord. Min. 1338, nn. 11–16; J. H. Sbaraka, Supplem. ad Script. Ord. Min., II, Rome 1921, pp. 269–70; Hutter, II, col. 625; Eubel, I, p. 340; A. Bertoni, Le b. Jean Duns Scot. sa vie, sa doctrine, ses disciples. Levanto 1917, p. 456; M. de Barcelona, N. B. O. Min., in Estudios Franc., 37 (1925), pp. 658–57; E. d'Alençon, s. V. in D'ThC, II, cols. 986–87; F. O'Brian, s. V. in DHG, IX, cols. 849–52. Giovanni Odoardi