Bonifazio da Ceva

BONIFAZIO DA CEVA. - Franciscan, b. at Ceva (Piedmont), of a noble marquisal family, between 1460 and 1470, d. at Paris on 12 April 1517 (Easter day). He entered (ca. 1495), among the Coletans of Rougemont in the province of St. Bonaventure of Burgundy, after having been a page at the courts of the prince-electors of Saxony and of Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (1458-90). A learned jurist and a most skillful man of action, his life was dominated, both in his very eventful activity and in his writings, by the idea of a just reform in the Seraphic Order, which for him was the middle way of the Coletans, under Conventual ministers, while he opposed in every way, both in the juridical field and in the practical one, even with the support of the court of Burgundy, the reform of the Observant Friars Minor, considered to be outside the juridical bonds with the Order. His activity continued more intensely and violently under the intriguing minister general p. Egidio Delfini (1500-1506), of whom B. was a strong arm for the fusion of the various reforms into a single Order of reformed Conventuals, and by whom he was made minister of the province of France (1504) and commissary of the other French provinces, an office he held until his death. After the failure of his attempt to restore in force the Statuta Iulii II (1506), skillfully reworked by B. himself (1508), and after the failure of various appeals for the same purpose to the Fifth Lateran Council, to General Chapters and to interventions both political, by the Parliament of France, and doctrinal, by the theological faculty of the University of Paris, the « Dux Coletanorum » died a month before Leo X united, under the Observants, all the various Franciscan reforms, definitively separating them from the Conventuals (bull Ite et vos, 29 May 1517).

It was the complete collapse and the overturning of B.'s entire work. In Franciscan history his activity, carried forward with the best intentions, as it seems, may be compared to that of Bonagrazia da Bergamo (v.) against the Spirituals in the 14th century and to the opposite one of Guillaume Josseaume against the Conventuals in the first decades of the 15th century.

Let us recall, among B.'s historical writings, the rich and important Firmamentum trium Ordinum b.mi P.N. Francisci (Paris 1512) in 5 parts, and the violent Defensorium elucidativum, against the Observants (ibid. 1516); among his other works: Adventuale (ibid. 1512), Quadragesimale et Sermones paschales (ibid. 1517), De perfectione christiana cum praeclaris imaginibus ad Leonem X (ibid. 1517), rare and esteemed; Viaticae excursionis: de variis hominum vitiis (ibid. 1518), another fine ascetic treatise.

Lorenzo Di Fonzo