Bonaventure Hinwood

Edward Victor Hinwood OFM (12 February 1930 – 8 September 2016) was a South African Roman Catholic priest, poet, lecturer in Fundamental and Dogmatic Theology, and Academic Dean at St. John Vianney Seminary NPC.

Biography

Edward Victor Hinwood was born in Hillbrow, Johannesburg. His mother was an Afrikaan who descended from the Visser colonists who came to Cape Town with Jan van Riebeeck. She later became completely anglicized. His English father was a member of the Hewitt family who settled in Somerset East in 1832.

He completed his elementary school education at Orange Grove Primary School and attended Highlands North High School in Johannesburg, where he matriculated in 1946. Already at school he was interested in the library business and became a member of the School and Children's Library Division of the South African Library Association (SABBA). In 1947, he was appointed the first student librarian at the Johannesburg Public Library.

He then studied further at the University of the Witwatersrand and obtained a B.A. degree in English and History (1950) and Honors degree in History (1951). As a student at Witwatersrand, he was a co-founder of the Students' Anglican Society. At the same time he studied Library Science through the SABV and in 1952 became a fellow.

In 1972, he obtained an M.Bibl. Degree from the University of Pretoria with a dissertation on The divisions of human knowledge in the writings of Saint Bonaventure. He was baptized as a Methodist and joined the Anglican Church, but at this time sought greater religious certainty, which he found in the Catholic Church. He converted in October 1951, after which he was convinced of his calling as a priest. In 1953, he approached the members of the Irish Province of the Franciscan Order in Pretoria, which at the time staffed the Catholic Seminary in Pretoria, and became the first South African to join them. As usual, he exchanged his own first names for those of a saint, namely Bonaventure. For a year he studied at the St. John Vianney Nursery School in Pretoria and then continued to study for three years in Ireland and six and a half years in Rome. In July 1960 he was ordained a priest in Rome.

In 1963, he obtained his doctorate (SDL) in theology at the Pontificium Athenaeum Antonianum, with a dissertation in Latin on Race, the reflections of a theologian. In January 1964, he returned from overseas as a member of the Order of Franciscans and was appointed lecturer at the St. John Vianney Nursery School in Pretoria, a position he held until his retirement in 2000.

In 1964, he was head of the library at St. John Vianney Seminary in Pretoria and for a few years around 1970 he served on the editorial board of South African Libraries. Throughout his career, Hinwood was actively involved in the community and on public bodies. From 1964, he acted as adviser in connection with religious matters at the Transvaal Council for the Performing Arts (TRUK). At the South African Broadcasting Corporation, he was a member of the Advisory Committee for Religious Programs. He also served on the executive boards of the Southern African Council for Theological Education, the Dogmatological Working Community of Southern Africa and the Catholic Theological Society of Southern Africa. He was later also appointed provincial secretary of the Franciscans in Southern Africa. Since 1980, he also served as a board member on the Board of the South African Institute for Library and Information Science.

In 1966 (two years after he started writing poetry in Afrikaans), Hinwood had been part of a group of poets who meet regularly in Pretoria to comment on each other's works. This group included poets such as Phil du Plessis, Wilhelm Knobel, George Weideman, Casper Schmidt, D. P. M. Botes, Stephan Bouwer, Pirow Bekker, Jeanne Goosen, Marié Blomerus, Louis Eksteen, Marlise Joubert, Coenie Rudolph, Wessel Pretorius, Barend J. Toerien and De Waal Venter.

From his school days he has an active interest in the theater and participates in various productions during this time and at university, sometimes up to as many as eight productions per year. In 1973, he played a role in the film Assault on Kariba.

In February 1986, Hinwood started a new group of poetry. The group initially meet at Santa Sophia, the academic convent next to St. John Vianney Nursery School, where Hinwood then lived. Later, the almost monthly meetings were held alternately at the home of different members of the group. (As a librarian, he also carefully documented and archived these poem readings and discussions). Members of the second group of poets included Johann Lodewyk Marais (at whose request the poets' meetings were restarted), Renée Marais, Johann de Lange, Henk Havenga, Joan Lötter, Marié Blomerus, Paula van Rooyen, Marietjie van der Walt, Hennie Meyer, Martjie Bosman, Johann de Jager (who set up and operated the Bent publishing house), Jacobus van der Riet and Costa André Georghiou.

One of the many areas in which Father Bonaventure Hinwood made a very large contribution was in the translation of liturgical material from (especially) Latin and English into Afrikaans, such as the Missal, with all the prayers used in the Catholic Church, and the Lessonarium, the collection of scripture readings and turn psalms used in Sunday and weekday services. The highlight of his liturgical translation work is the Afrikaans translation, specifically for use in the Catholic liturgy, of the 150 biblical psalms and 12 hymns.

Works

• Smeulvuur (1981; under the pen name "Hewitt Visser")
• Gee ons vandag: Oordenkinge vir elke dag (1984)
• Sonvis (1988)
• Psalms en lofgesange (1993)
• Serafyn (2004)
• Afskynsels (2007)
• Seevlak tot savanna (2008)
• Safari (2009)
• Sover (2014; illustrated by Lionel Hinwood)

Translated into English

• Race: The Reflections of a Theologian (Rome: Herder, 1964).
• What about the Others?: Theological Reflections on Non-Christian Religions (Pretoria: Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference, 1977).
• "The Division of Human Knowledge in the Writings of Saint Bonaventure," Franciscan Studies, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 1 (1978), pp. 220–59.
• Your Question Answered (Cape Town: Catholic Bookshop, 1980).
• More Answers to Your Questions (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 1983).
• Further Questions Answered (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 1983).
• Answers to Your Questions (Cape Town: Catholic Bookshop, 1986).
• Later Answers (Pretoria: B. Hinwood, 1991).
• "Ecumenism." In: The Catholic Church in Contemporary Southern Africa, ed. Joy Brain and Philippe Denis (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 1999), pp. 349–85.

References

• Denis, Philippe (1998). The Dominican Friars in Southern Africa: A Social History, 1577-1990. Leiden and Boston: Brill Academic Publishers.
• Kannemeyer, J. C. (2005). Die Afrikaanse Literatuur, 1652–2004. Cape Town: Human & Rousseau.