BONIFAZIO DA CEVA. – Franciscan, born at Ceva (Piedmont), of a noble marquessial family, between 1460 and 1470, died in Paris on 12 April 1517 (Easter Day). He entered (c. 1495) among the Coletans of Rougemont in the province of S. Bonaventura of Burgundy, after having been a page at the courts of the prince-electors of Saxony and of Mattia Corvino of Hungary (1458–90). A learned jurist and exceptionally able man of action, his life was dominated, both in his highly eventful activity and in his writings, by the idea of a proper reform within the Seraphic Order, which for him was the moderate one represented by the Coletans under the Conventual ministers. At the same time, both in the juridical and the practical sphere, and also with the support of the court of Burgundy, he opposed by every means the reform of the Observant Friars Minor, whom he considered to be outside the juridical bonds of the Order. His activity continued with greater intensity
and violence under the intriguing minister general, Fr. Egidio Delfini (1500–1506), for whom B. was a strong arm in the merging of the various reforms into a single Order of Reformed Conventuals; Delfini appointed him minister of the province of France (1504) and commissioner of the other French provinces, a position he held until his death. His attempt to restore the Statuta Iulii II (1506), skillfully reworked by B. himself (1508), having failed, as did various appeals for the same purpose to the Fifth Lateran Council and to general Chapters, as well as both political interventions by the Parliament of France and doctrinal interventions by the theological faculty of the University of Paris, the « Dux Coletanorum » died one month before Leo X united all the various Franciscan reforms under the Observants, definitively separating them from the Conventuals (bull Ite et vos, 29 May 1517).
This was the complete collapse and reversal of all B.’s work. In Franciscan history, his activity, undertaken, it seems, with the best intentions, may be compared Bonagrazia da Bergamo (v.) against the Spirituals in the fourteenth century, and with the opposing activity of Guglielmo Josseaume against the Conventuals in the first decades of the fifteenth century.
Among B.’s historical writings, we should recall the rich and important Firmamentum trium Ordinum b.mi P.N. Francisci (Paris 1512), in five parts, and the vigorous Defensorium elucidativum, against the Observants (there 1516); among his other works: Adventuale (there 1512), Quadragesimale et Sermones paschales (there 1517), De perfectione christiana cum praeclaris imaginibus ad Leonem X (there 1517), rare and highly esteemed; Viaticae excursionis: de variis hominum vitiis (there 1518), another fine ascetical treatise.
Lorenzo Di Fonzo