Saint Bonaventure

Cardinal, Bishop, Doctor of the Church
(1221–1274)

Saint Bonaventure was born Giovanni di Fidanza at Bagnoregio near Viterbo in Italy in 1221. As a young child he fell gravely ill and was brought by his mother to Saint Francis of Assisi, who prayed over him and declared that the child would do great things. When he recovered, his mother attributed his cure to the intercession of Francis, and the memory of this encounter stayed with Bonaventure all his life, shaping his deep love for the Franciscan spirit.

He studied philosophy and theology in Paris under Alexander of Hales, the great Franciscan master, and entered the Order of Friars Minor around 1243. His intellectual gifts were extraordinary, and he mastered the theological learning of his day with a thoroughness that won the admiration of all his contemporaries. He was a close friend of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and the two men represent the twin peaks of thirteenth-century Catholic theology: Thomas the Dominican, systematic and philosophical, and Bonaventure the Franciscan, more mystical and contemplative in his approach, though both were rigorous thinkers of the highest order.

In 1257 he was elected Minister General of the Franciscan Order, which was at that time riven by bitter controversy over the meaning and practice of poverty. Bonaventure governed the Order with great wisdom and charity, holding together the different currents without suppressing legitimate diversity, and he wrote a Life of Saint Francis that became the definitive biography of the founder and was ordered to replace all earlier versions. In this Life he presented Francis as the perfect image of Christ, the man of evangelical poverty and mystical union with God.

He was created Cardinal-Bishop of Albano by Pope Gregory X in 1273 and played a leading role in the Second Council of Lyons in 1274, which achieved a temporary reunion with the Eastern Church. He died during the council on July 15, 1274, and was buried with great solemnity. He was canonised in 1482 and declared a Doctor of the Church by Sixtus V in 1588, who gave him the title Doctor Seraphicus, the Seraphic Doctor. His feast is celebrated on July 15th.