St. Bonaventure

St. Bonaventure was born Giovanni di Fidanza around 1221 at Bagnoregio in Italy. He became a Franciscan friar, theologian, Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor, cardinal bishop, and Doctor of the Church. He is called the Seraphic Doctor because his theology joins careful learning with burning love. A tradition preserved in Franciscan memory says that he was gravely ill as a child and was healed through the intercession of St. Francis of Assisi.

His mother, grateful for the favor, saw in him a child marked for God. He later studied at the University of Paris, where he entered the Franciscan Order and became a master of theology. Paris was a place of intense intellectual debate, and Bonaventure defended the mendicant orders when some secular masters attacked their right to teach and preach. His friendship and intellectual companionship with St. Thomas Aquinas belong to the golden age of scholastic theology. The two men differed in temperament and approach, but both served the same Catholic truth.

Bonaventure’s writings show a mind formed by Scripture, St. Augustine, Dionysian mysticism, Franciscan poverty, and contemplation of Christ crucified. As Minister General, he had to govern a rapidly growing order under tension. Some friars wanted a very strict interpretation of Franciscan poverty; others needed practical organization for preaching, study, and mission. Bonaventure guided the order with prudence, wrote the Major Life of St. Francis, and helped give the Franciscans a stable spiritual identity.

His writings include The Journey of the Mind into God, The Tree of Life, The Triple Way, Breviloquium, Collations on the Six Days, commentaries on Scripture and the Sentences, and sermons. Pope Gregory X made him a cardinal, and he played an important role at the Second Council of Lyon, where he worked for reunion with the Greeks. He died at Lyon in 1274 while the council was still underway. Canonized in 1482 and declared a Doctor of the Church, he remains a master of theology as prayer: the mind ascending to God through humility, love, and the crucified Christ.

Near the end of his life, Bonaventure accepted the cardinal’s hat in obedience, though he remained a Franciscan in spirit. A famous story says the papal messengers found him washing dishes when they came with the red hat. Whether told simply or literally, the story preserves the memory of a theologian whose learning did not separate him from humility.