St. Bonaventure

St. Bonaventure was born around 1221 at Bagnoregio, near Orvieto in central Italy, and baptized Giovanni di Fidanza. According to tradition, he was healed of a dangerous childhood illness through the intercession of St. Francis of Assisi, a grace he himself gratefully recalled. Sent to the University of Paris, he studied under the Franciscan master Alexander of Hales and entered the Order of Friars Minor around 1243, going on to teach theology at Paris in the same years as his great Dominican contemporary, St. Thomas Aquinas. In 1257 Bonaventure was elected minister general of the Franciscans at a moment of serious internal division over how the friars should live the poverty of Francis. Governing the order for seventeen years with such wisdom, moderation, and firmness that he is often called its second founder, he wrote the Legenda Maior, the official life of St. Francis, and gave the order constitutions that stabilized its life for centuries. Bonaventure's theology unites rigorous scholastic learning with profound mysticism, earning him the title "Seraphic Doctor." His masterpiece, the Itinerarium Mentis in Deum (The Journey of the Mind to God), composed at La Verna where Francis had received the stigmata, traces the soul's ascent through creation and the soul itself to union with God in Christ crucified. In works such as the Breviloquium he showed that all learning finds its center in Christ, and his teaching remains a wellspring of Franciscan spirituality. Created cardinal bishop of Albano by Pope Gregory X in 1273, Bonaventure was a principal figure in preparing the Second Council of Lyon, which sought reunion with the Greek Church. He died at Lyon on July 15, 1274, while the council was still in session, and was buried there; his tomb was later despoiled during the wars of religion and the French Revolution, so that few of his relics survive. He was canonized in 1482 by Pope Sixtus IV and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1588 by Pope Sixtus V. His feast is celebrated on July 15, and he is honored as a patron of the Franciscan order.