Saint Bonaventure

Saint Bonaventure was a Franciscan, a theologian of Paris, Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor, and at the end of his life a cardinal and Bishop of Albano. The Church honors him as a Doctor of the Church, called the Seraphic Doctor. The Roman Martyrology emphasizes that in his writings he combined the highest learning with ardent piety. His obligatory memorial falls on July 15, the anniversary of his death.

He was born in Bagnoregio near Viterbo and was baptized John. The year of his birth is not certain: Benedict XVI gave it as probably 1217, while other sources give 1221. When he fell gravely ill as a child and his father, a physician, gave up hope, his mother asked for the intercession of Saint Francis of Assisi, and the boy recovered. Bonaventure later described this event himself.

He studied in Paris, first in the faculty of arts and then theology. Around 1243 he put on the Franciscan habit and took the name Bonaventure. He taught theology, and in 1257 Pope Alexander IV officially recognized him as a doctor and master of the University of Paris. At that time he defended the mendicant orders against the attacks of other university masters, showing that their vows are rooted in the Gospel.

That same year, 1257, the general chapter elected him Minister General of the order, which he led for seventeen years. Some friars, under the influence of the ideas of Joachim of Fiore, were then awaiting a new age of the Holy Spirit that would supposedly surpass the Church as it had been. Bonaventure defended the unity of the order and its place in the Church. In 1260 he promulgated new constitutions for the order at Narbonne. He also wrote a life of Saint Francis, the so-called Major Legend, which the general chapter at Pisa in 1263 recognized as the most faithful portrait of the founder.

For Bonaventure, theology was a wisdom meant to lead to the love of God. On Mount La Verna, where Saint Francis had received the stigmata, he wrote The Journey of the Mind into God (Itinerarium mentis in Deum), a description of the human ascent through the crucified Christ to union with God. Benedict XVI devoted three catecheses to him in 2010.

In 1273 Pope Gregory X made him a cardinal and Bishop of Albano and entrusted him with preparing the Second Council of Lyon, which was meant to restore unity between the Latin and Greek Churches. Bonaventure died suddenly in Lyon on July 15, 1274, as the council’s sessions were drawing to a close. That same year Saint Thomas Aquinas died on his way to the same council.

Pope Sixtus IV canonized him in 1482. In 1588 Sixtus V, who had himself come from the Franciscan order, declared him a Doctor of the Church and in his bull placed him beside Saint Thomas Aquinas as a master of theology. On the seventh centenary of his death, Paul VI recalled that the Seraphic Doctor can enlighten our own times as well.