Rhetorical evidentia , Moral Incontinence, and the Therapeutic Images of Death, Judgment, and Hell in Bonaventure's Soliloquium

Abstract: Like other ancient and medieval writings, Bonaventure's Soliloquium ( c . 1259) aims not only to instruct, but also to move, exercise, and reform its readers. In fact, it is partly designed as a therapy for moral incontinence. Among its many elements, the therapy predominantly comprises several descriptions of death, judgment, and hell. Yet Bonaventure nowhere elaborates on the disease he is trying to cure nor why or how certain eschatological descriptions are supposed to work against it. Without such understanding, however, readers ignore how to engage with the writing, which makes its projected therapy inconsequential. The question then becomes: How are those descriptions formed to fulfill their role and how should the audience approach them? The present investigation attempts to answer this problem. The hypothesis is that rhetoric, especially its teachings on evidentia , plays a central part in the crafting of the eschatological descriptions and in their ability to function as therapeutic devices. Moreover, in researching this hypothesis, the investigation deals with three broader points. First, it shows the importance of images in Christianity insofar as they lead the attention from the invisible to the visible, instead of the other way around. Second, it argues that rhetoric is fundamental to Bonaventure's overall thinking. And third, it counters the widespread conception of religious fear as synonymous with dread and anxiety. It explains that Bonaventure had a more complex view of fear, which allowed him to help readers navigate through painful eschatological worries slowly toward positive, selfless, and loving fear of God.