Proemium
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/4/d/0/q/bon-sent-IV-proem
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### PROEMIUM
#### TO THE FOURTH BOOK OF THE SENTENCES.

> *The apothecary shall make confections of sweetness, and shall make up ointments of health.*

This word is written in Ecclesiasticus the thirty-eighth chapter; and when it is considered more diligently, there is set forth and commended in it the matter of the fourth book of the Sentences, for our instruction and exercise. Now it is set forth under a twofold trope or metaphor, namely of *the confections of sweetness* and *the ointments of health.* From these it is given us to understand that the sacramental medicines are both *sweet* and *wholesome;* and in this lies the *perfect praise* both of the medicine and of the physician. For the sick man seeks nothing further in a medicine than that it have *sweetness* in the use and *efficacy* in the effect; and the physician who bestows this upon a medicine is a perfect physician, according to that saying of the poet:

> He has carried every vote who has mingled the useful with the sweet.

The sacramental medicines, therefore, are *odour-bearing confections* and *health-bearing ointments.* But the health-bearing ointments are such in respect of *the sick man to be cured,* the odour-bearing confections in respect of *God to be appeased;* and these [stand] against the two things which fault brings about: for it offends God and wounds nature; and by offending God it *despoils* man *of grace,* and by wounding nature it *wounds his natural [endowments].* The Sacraments, therefore, are *perfect* medicines, since by their own sweetness they appease God, and by appeasing make him propitious and obtain grace; and they clothe the man who has been *despoiled,* and cure by their own power the man who is *infirm,* and thus repair his natural [endowments].

And thus the man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, *despoiled* and *wounded,* is clothed again and cured by the Samaritan, namely by Christ the Lord, in whose person it is now said: *The apothecary shall make confections of sweetness;* that is, he shall institute Sacraments fragrant unto the appeasing of the divine majesty. *Shall make:* he says it in the future, speaking in the time of the Mosaic law for the time of the law of grace. For although in that law there are said to have been confections and sacrifices fragrant unto God, nevertheless they were not appeasing God *by their own power.* For the Lord commanded Moses, in Exodus the thirtieth chapter, to make incense compounded by the work of the perfumer: *Thou shalt make incense,* he says, and so on; he had commanded Aaron to offer it: *Thou shalt set the altar over against the veil;* and afterwards he adds: *And Aaron shall burn upon it incense in the morning, sweet-smelling, and at evening he shall burn incense.* And in almost every oblation it is said in Leviticus: *For a most sweet odour to the Lord.* — But that odour did not appease the Lord, because of the *emptiness of the things offered,* as the Apostle says to the Hebrews in the tenth chapter: *The Law, having a shadow of the good things to come,* and so on. Nor did it appease, because of the *uncleanness of those who offered,* as is said in Isaiah the first chapter: *Offer sacrifice no more in vain; incense is an abomination to me;* and the reason is subjoined afterwards: *For your hands are full of blood.* — To this end, therefore, that anyone might make fragrant confections, it was necessary that there should be no uncleanness in him, and that he should be full of the fragrance of true odour; but no such one could be found, nor be generated from man, because of the uncleanness of the one generating: and therefore it was necessary that the Lord himself should by his own power fit a body for him, according to that word of the Psalm which the Apostle takes up in the tenth chapter to the Hebrews, speaking of Christ: *Coming into the world, he says: Sacrifice and oblation thou wouldest not, but a body thou hast fitted to me. Holocausts for sin did not please thee, then said I: Behold, I come.* Well does he say *thou hast fitted,* because the Lord [was] clean, having cleansed the Virgin «with that purity than which a greater cannot be

understood under God», and fitted a body for him, that it might be a vessel of cleanness containing every fragrance; which the patriarch Jacob, foreseeing, spoke of in Genesis the twenty-seventh chapter: *Behold, the smell of my son is as the smell of a plentiful field, which the Lord hath blessed.* This one, then, was the *perfect perfumer,* because he did not beg his odour from elsewhere, but himself in himself was fragrant to the Father. And that this odour, with which he was full, might be derived to others, he offered himself to God the Father for all, according to that word to the Ephesians in the fifth chapter: *He hath loved us and hath delivered himself up an oblation and a sacrifice to God for an odour of sweetness.* Then *was the alabaster box broken, and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment;* then *of this fulness we all have received,* since God is appeased not only by *the Passion itself,* but even *in the memorials of the Passion;* so that not only the *Passion* is a confection of sweetness, but also the *memorials,* namely the Sacraments, according to that word of Ecclesiasticus the forty-ninth chapter: *The memory of Josias is like the composition of a sweet smell made by the work of a perfumer;* so that by *Josias* we may understand Christ in his Passion; for *Josias* is interpreted: where the burning of the Lord is, or, in whom there is sacrifice. — But the memorials are the Sacraments signifying the Passion now past. With these memorials the house of the Church militant abounds and has been filled; and therefore it has been filled *with the odour of the ointment,* according to what the Holy Spirit says in the fourth chapter of the Canticles: *The odour of thy ointments is above all aromatical spices.* — The *apothecary,* therefore, *shall make confections of sweetness,* namely such as appease God.

He shall nonetheless make up *ointments of health,* that is, Sacraments *curing the disease.* For there were indeed in the Law figurative unctions, but they were not *healing;* because the disease was lethal, and the unction was superficial. Whence the Apostle says to the Hebrews in the ninth chapter that the legal medicines could not *make him that serveth perfect according to the conscience, consisting only in meats and drinks and divers washings and justices of the flesh.* Since, therefore, they anointed the flesh, while the lethal wound was in the mind, they could not cure. Whence to the Hebrews in the tenth chapter: *It is impossible that with the blood of oxen and of goats sins should be taken away.* Therefore Isaiah cried out and said in the first chapter: *The wound and bruise and swelling sore is not bound up, nor dressed with medicine, nor soothed with oil.* This he says as regards the threefold kind of sin by which man was made infirm: by the *wound* is understood original sin, by the *bruise* venial sin, by the *swelling sore* mortal sin. And therefore he puts first: *The whole head is sick,* and so on.

To this end, therefore, that anyone might make *ointments of health*, it was necessary that he should bring a *spiritual unction* and a *vital power.* And this was Christ the Lord, who truly was *Christ* because *anointed,* according to what is said in Isaiah the sixty-first chapter: *The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me, to preach to the meek,* and so on. And that this is to be understood of Christ, he himself bears witness to himself in the fourth chapter of Luke, where, after he had read this word, he said: *This day is fulfilled this Scripture in your ears.* He was able to make up a *healing unction,* according to what blessed Peter says of him in the tenth chapter of Acts: *God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.* He anointed him *with the Holy Spirit,* and therefore he brought a *spiritual unction;* and *with power*, and so he had a *vital power; for God was in him* through the unction, since he himself was God, and so he had *life* in himself, according to that word of John the fifth chapter: *As the Father hath life in himself, so he hath given to the Son also to have life in himself.*

And because he had *life* in himself, he could *give life to the dead;* and therefore he made *ointments curing the lethal disease.* For while he united our mortality to life, and he who was life died, there was made a confection in which and through which the dead man comes to life again, and from his death the Sacraments have the efficacy of giving life. Whence upon that word to the Ephesians in the fifth chapter: *This is a great sacrament; but I speak in Christ and in the Church,* Augustine says: «Adam sleeps, that Eve may be made; Christ dies, that the Church may be made. While Adam sleeps, Eve is made from his side; when Christ is dead, his side is struck with the lance, that there may flow forth

the Sacraments by which the Church may be formed». Therefore the Sacraments are said to have flowed forth rather from the *side* than from the feet or the hands — although from thence blood had flowed — because of the very fittingness in signifying, since *blood and water* flowed forth together; and they flowed forth indeed from one *already dead;* in which is fittingly expressed the *making and institution* of the Sacraments. For just as in *meriting* efficacy for the Sacraments *death* was joined with *life,* so the vital *blood* went out with the *water:* so, then, the Sacraments are instituted alike in *word* and in *element;* and therefore, for healing, they are said to be not only *made,* but also *made up*.

These Sacraments, therefore, are *perfect* medicines, which the apothecary made for the *appeasing of God,* and therefore they are *confections of sweetness;* and for the *healing of the sick man,* and therefore they are *ointments of health.* And they are ointments of health because they *bestow* health and *dispose* to health: they *bestow* health sufficiently, which is the health of *grace,* of which it is said in the Psalm: *Who healeth the broken of heart and bindeth up their bruises;* they *dispose* to perfect health, which is the health of *glory,* of which it is said in the Psalm: *Who forgiveth all thy iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases.* And this indeed he does in glory. And according to this, this book, and so on.

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