Date: August 1, 2025
In the winter of 2025, Beth Lewis, the Bishop Payne Library’s Rare Book Conservator, was given a small book to repair. As she was assessing the issues with the book–detached cover, detached spine, and loose text block–she noticed the book was handwritten on skin parchment and in medieval Latin. Recognizing there was something extremely special about this book, Beth more carefully examined the pages and immediately noticed that the contents of the book was a manuscript that was at least a few centuries older than originally thought. The more she examined these vellum pages, and used ChatGPT to translate some of the medieval Latin contents, she realized that this was a rare Bonaventure manuscript copied by at least two different people.
Beth asked several VTS professors to take a look at it, and the BPL rare book team also inquired of a Medieval Theology professor and a doctoral student at The Catholic University of America. Every step of the way, these professors and scholars confirmed that this was an extremely rare manuscript dating from sometime between Bonaventure’s lifetime in the 13th century and the end of the 15th century.
The middle portion of the book is a manuscript containing most of Bonaventure’s Breviloquium, a lyrical summary of the whole field of theology that reads more easily and concisely than the theological writings of Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure’s contemporary. The pages preceding and following the Breviloquium appear to be Bonaventure’s Sentences in a different handwriting.
The adventure to uncover the complete story of this manuscript is only beginning! Stay tuned!
David Buresh
Cataloger and Rare Book Curator
Beth Lewis
Rare Book Conservator