Conquassatum, vulneratum,
Arundine verberatum,
Facie sputis illitâ.
Salve, cujus dulcis vultus,
Immutatus et incultus,
Immutavit suum florem,
Totus versus in pallorem,
Quem cœli tremit curia.

Omnis vigor atque viror
Hinc recessit, non admiror,
Mors apparet in adspectu,
Totus pendens in defectu,
Attritus ægrâ macie.
Sic affectus, sic despectus,
Propter me sic interfectus,
Peccatori tam indigno
Cum amoris intersigno
Appare clarâ facie.

In hâc tuâ passione

Me agnosce, Pastor bone,
Cujus sumpsi mel ex ore,
Haustum lactis cum dulcore,
Præ omnibus deliciis.
Non me reum asperneris,
Nec indignum dedigneris;

Morte tibi jam vicinâ
Tuum caput hic inclina,
In meis pausa brachiis.

73. Cf. Judg. xiv. 8, 9.

Tuæ sanctæ passioni

Me gauderem interponi,

In hâc cruce tecum mori
Præsta crucis amatori,

Sub cruce tuâ moriar.
Morti tuæ tam amaræ
Grates ago, Jesu care,
Qui es clemens pie Deus,
Fac quod petit tuus reus,
Ut absque te non finiar.

Dum me mori est necesse,
Noli mihi tunc deesse;
In tremendâ mortis horâ
Veni, Jesu, absque morâ,
Tuere me et libera.
Cum me jubes emigrare,
Jesu care, tunc appare;
O amator amplectende,
Temetipsum tunc ostende
In cruce salutiferâ.

BONAVENTURA.

ONAVENTURA, a Tuscan by birth, was born in

BON

1221, and educated at Paris, which was still the most illustrious school of theology in Europe. Upon entering the Franciscan Order, he changed his family name, John of Fidanza, to that by which he is known to the after world. In 1245 he became himself professor of theology at Paris, in 1256 General of his Order, and in 1273 cardinal-bishop of Alba. He died in 1274 at Lyons, during the Council which was held there, to which he had accompanied Pope Gregory the 10th. At once a master in the scholastic and mystical theology, though far greater in the last, he received from the Church of the middle ages the title Doctor Seraphicus, and his own Order set him against the yet greater Dominican, Thomas Aquinas. His Biblia Pauperum is an honourable testimony to his zeal for the spread of Scriptural knowledge through the ministry of the Word among the common people: nor can any one have even that partial knowledge of his writings, which is all that I myself would claim, without entirest conviction that he who could thus write, must have possessed a richest personal familiarity with all the deeper mysteries of that spiritual life whereof he speaks. Yet this ought not to tempt us to deny, but rather the more freely to declare, that he shared, and shared largely, in the error as well as in the truth of his age. At the same time, if we except the Psaltery of the Virgin,

there is no work of his by which he could be so unfavourably known as his Meditations on the Life of Jesus Christ, of which some may remember a most offensive reproduction some years ago in England. If indeed that Psaltery of the Virgin be his, of which happily there are considerable doubts, it is too plain that he did not merely acquiesce in that amount of worship of the creature which he found, but was also its enthusiastic promoter to a yet higher and wilder pitch than before it had reached. His Latin poetry is good, but does not call for any especial criticism.

XXIII. IN PASSIONE DOMINI.

UAM despectus, quam dejectus,

QUAM

Rex cœlorum est effectus,

Ut salvaret sæculum;

Esurivit et sitivit,

Pauper et egenus ivit

Usque ad patibulum.

Recordare paupertatis,
Et extremæ vilitatis,
Et gravis supplicii.
Si es compos rationis,
Esto memor passionis,
Fellis, et absinthii.

XXIII. Bonaventuræ Opp. Lugduni, 1668, vol. vi. p. 423.

5

10

35. secum] All are aware that there are, even in the Latin of the best age, some slight anticipations of the breaking down of the distinction between the demonstrative and the reflective pronouns (Zumpt, Lat. Gramm. § 550). In medieval Latin they are continually confounded, and the reflective put instead of the demonstrative, as here, and again in the next stanza.