BONET, NICOLAS. - Franciscan theologian, probably born in Tours in the last decades of the 13th century, died before 27 October 1343. A student at the University of Paris, he obtained academic degrees up to the magisterium and taught there for several years. He is referred to as "Sacrae Theologiae Magister" in a papal act of 1342, and his admirers called him "Doctor proficuus, pacificus, imaginativus." It is uncertain whether he was a direct disciple of Scotus, though he followed various of his doctrines and always regarded him as one of his preferred masters.
He must have enjoyed great prestige among Parisian theologians, for it is believed that Clement V (1304-15) commissioned him to write the *Tractatus de conceptione B. M. V.*, and Philip VI of France appointed him (1333), along with other masters, to examine the doctrine of John XXII on 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. He does not seem to have been able to fulfill his mission. On 27 November 1342 he was appointed bishop of Malta, but his episcopate was very brief. He left numerous philosophical and theological writings. Among these we may recall his Aristotelian commentaries on the *Metaphysics*, on *Natural Philosophy*, and on the *Categories* (Venice 1505), the *Theologia naturalis* (ibid. 1505), and other works attributed to him, such as the *Formalitates in via Scoti* (ibid. 1489) and the *Postilla in Genesim* (ibid. 1515). Bonet exerted considerable influence on later scholastics. He does not seem to have been the originator of that singular opinion known as Bonestism, according to which the words of Christ "Woman, behold your son" would have effected a kind of transubstantiation, making St. John the natural son of Mary.