§ 10.

   And although this Doctor, St. Bonaventure, be glorious and most celebrated in the Catholic Church, and be greatly respendant in Heaven, where he is crowned with that crown, which God witholds for those who love Him, and although no human thing is lacking to him, who enjoys the good things with Christ, which neither the eye sees, nor the heart expects; nevertheless the charity of Christ and a burning affection of a certain devotion, by which for him We have been perpetually consumed from nearly Our first years, urges Us to consider how to rather propagate and explain his sanctity and to a greater extent his doctrine, as much as We are able with the help of the Lord. Indeed We are moved, that there is a part, of Our seraphic Relgion, in holy communion with him, in which We have been educated and versed for many years, and for whom as a for a most worthy mother, We should manifest every honor of piety and gratitude of heart; but much more do the glory of God, the pastoral office which We bear, the so many labors undertaken by this most holy man on behalf of the Church of God, and his so many illustrious merits urge Us, so conjoined as they are with the Roman Church, in whose broadest ranks and Senate he sat with the highest praise. Finally the utility of the universal Church moves Us, which can be always more and more richly captivated by the erudition of such a Doctor, especially when the ambushes and the diabolical machinations of heretics, by which they oppose most vehemently in this sad age that sacred theology, which is called Scholastic, admonish Us greatly, that We should retain, explain, and propagate this same theology, as something which nothing can be more fruitful for the Church of God. For with the divine gift of Him, who alone gives the spirit of knowledge (scientia) and wisdom and understanding, and who furnishes His Church throughout the lifetimes of generations, as is needed, with new benifits, and who provides Her with new supports, there has been discovered by Our ancestors, most wise men, Scholastic theology, which by two Doctors glorious above all, the angelic Saint Thomas, and the seraphic Saint Bonaventure, the most brilliant professors in this capacity, and first among those, who have been registered among the number of the Saints, with excellent genius, assiduous study, great labors and vigils have refined and decorated it, and have passed it on, to those who would come after, optimally arranged and in many ways very clearly explained. And indeed such a salutary understanding and practice of this science, which spread abroad from the richest sources of divine letters, Roman Pontiffs, holy Fathers and Councils, could certainly always bring the greatest assistance to the Church, either to understand and interpret, truly and sensibly, the Scriptures themselves, or to read through and explain the Fathers more securely and usefully, or to detect and refute the various errors and heresies. Truly in these last days, in which already there has come those dangerous times described by the Apostle, and the blasphemous, proud, seductive men who advance to what is worse still, erring and sending others into error, this (kind of theology) is necessary to sensibly confirm the dogmas of the Catholic Faith and confute heresies. And the state of affairs is such, that the judges are the very enemies themselves of the truth, by whom Scholastic theology has become dreadful to the greatest degree, who scarcely understand, by that apt and inner connected coherence of things and causes, in that order and arrangment, as by the training of soldiers in fighting, with those lucid definitions and distinctions, by that firmness of arguments and the sharpest disputations, that light is distinguished from shadows, and the true from the false, and their mendacity, involuted with many deceptions and fallacies, like a vestment borne away, is brought to light and stripped bare. In as much as therefore as these men begin to fight and overturn this most fortified citadel of Scholastic theology, so much more does it befit us to defend this unconquered defense of the Faith, and both to conserve and keep safe the inheritance of Our fathers, and to embellish, as much as we can, the keenest defenders of the truth with merited honors.