In Chapter 4, “Bonaventure and the Nine Choirs of Angels,” I examine one of the most condensed discussions in Bonaventure’s text. In Itinerarium 4.4, Bonaventure says that our spirit must be “brought into conformity with the heavenly Jerusalem.” But “no one enters that city,” he adds, “unless that city has first descended into the person’s heart by means of grace.” How does that happen? Well, the heavenly Jerusalem “descends into the heart,” according to Bonaventure, when “our spirit is adorned with nine orderly levels” – levels that correspond, as it turns out, to the nine choirs of angels. In this section, Bonaventure takes two major traditions regarding the nine choirs of angels – one that can be traced to the Celestial Hierarchy of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and the other to a homily by Pope St. Gregory the Great – and condenses them into nine words and nine short phrases. This chapter shows how remarkably concise Bonaventure could be using the methods he had learned for preaching.

The fifth chapter establishes Calvin’s dependence upon tradition in two different manners. First, it does so by examining those theologians upon whom Calvin relied. The chapter considers Calvin’s use of John Chrysostom, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Augustine of Hippo. Each case shows the earlier theologian’s authority for and influence upon Calvin. Then the chapter turns to three different doctrinal loci. These are the establishment of infant baptism, the Trinity, and predestination. In each instance, Calvin had to place his confidence in traditional sources, either to bolster his biblical work, or to replace what was impossible to produce biblically, as in the case of infant baptism.

This chapter considers major thinkers of the late 11th and early 12th centuries. Peter Abelard's views on the relation between faith and reason, as well as his views on the Trinity and salvation, are discussed, along with the criticism by William of St. Thierry and Bernard of Clairvaux. The theology of these two Cisterican authors is also examined, especially their views on faith and reason, salvation and love.

Chapters 1–5 constitute Part I of the book, entitled “Free Will,” about the principal theories of free will from the 1220s–1320s and their background in Aristotle and earlier medieval thinkers. Chapter 1 gives an overview of the accounts of free will by Anselm of Canterbury, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Peter Lombard. Then it sketches the history of the reception of Aristotle’s action theory and offers an account of the principal Aristotelian doctrines that are relevant to later medieval theories of free will.

This chapter begins with an account of the depiction of Muhammad the prophet as the Antichrist at the time of the Crusades and its beginnings in Muslim Spain. It then segues to a discussion of the development of the figures of Al-Dajjal, the Muslim Antichist, and Armilus, the Jewish Antichrist. There follows a snapshot of ‘lives of the Antichrist’ in the year 1200 from Roger de Hoveden’s Annals, the one derived from Adso, the other from Joachim of Fiore. These two 'lives of the Antichrist' provided the conceptual space for debates over the next 600 years about who the Antichrist might be and whether he would come from inside or from outside of the church. It also continues the discussion of how the debate about the Antichrist now became focused around disputes over authority within and outside of the church. It analyses the Antichrist accounts of Gerhoh of Reichersberg, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Hildegard of Bingen. It concludes by establishing Joachim of Fiore’s ‘Antichrist’ as a crucial development in the history of the Antichrist by suggesting the idea of a papal Antichrist.