Saint Bonaventure

Saint Bonaventure is the Seraphic Doctor of the Catholic Church and one of the two great philosophical-theological figures of the thirteenth century, alongside his Dominican contemporary Saint Thomas Aquinas. As Minister General of the Franciscan Order for seventeen years, he gave the Order its mature institutional form. As theologian and mystic, he produced the principal Franciscan synthesis of scholastic theology with mystical contemplation.

Early life and entry to the Franciscan Order

Giovanni di Fidanza was born around 1217 (some sources say 1221) at Bagnoregio, a hilltop town in the Papal States about sixty miles north of Rome. Tradition records that, as a young child, he was seriously ill, and his mother brought him to Saint Francis of Assisi for prayer. When Francis healed him, he supposedly exclaimed "O buona ventura!" ("O good fortune!"), the etymology (whether historical or pious) of his religious name Bonaventure.

He went to Paris around 1235 to study at the University of Paris. There he encountered Alexander of Hales, a brilliant English theologian who had joined the new Franciscan Order in 1236. Bonaventure himself entered the Order around 1243, at approximately age twenty-two. He continued his studies under Alexander and other Franciscan masters at Paris.

Master at Paris and the mendicant controversy

In 1253, Bonaventure was named regent master of the Franciscan studium at Paris, the chair of theology that the Order had established under Alexander of Hales. He held the chair for four years, lecturing on the Bible and on Peter Lombard's Sentences (the standard medieval theology textbook).

His most contested year was 1255-1256, during the mendicant controversy. The University of Paris's secular masters (clerics not in religious orders) opposed the presence of the new mendicant orders (Franciscans and Dominicans) in the university. The dispute was ferocious. Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, fellow young friars, defended the legitimacy of the mendicant orders side by side. Both received their doctorates and full incorporation as masters at Paris on the same day, August 23, 1257, when Pope Alexander IV intervened to settle the controversy in favor of the friars.¹

Minister General of the Franciscan Order

In February 1257, before he had even received his Paris doctorate, Bonaventure was elected Minister General of the Franciscan Order. He was thirty-six years old. He would govern the Order until 1273, a span of sixteen years that gave the Franciscans their mature institutional form.

The Order Bonaventure inherited was internally fractured between two factions: the "Spirituals," who held that Francis's literal radical poverty must be retained without mitigation, and the "Conventuals," who held that the Order needed structured houses, libraries, and corporate property for its educational and apostolic mission. Bonaventure forged a middle way, the Constitutions of Narbonne (1260), which preserved the Franciscan charism while allowing the practical institutional adaptation the Order required to survive and grow.

He also commissioned the Legenda Maior, the authoritative biography of Saint Francis, which became the standard medieval Franciscan account.

Theological writings

Bonaventure's theological corpus, while less voluminous than that of his contemporary Thomas Aquinas, is a major monument of medieval theology in its own right. His principal works:

1. Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (1250-1252): the standard early-career master's work, four large volumes.
2. Breviloquium (1257): a brief synthesis of theology, intended as a one-volume textbook for Franciscan students.
3. Itinerarium Mentis in Deum ("The Soul's Journey into God," 1259): the mystical-theological masterpiece, composed during a retreat at La Verna (where Francis had received the stigmata). Seven stages of contemplative ascent, from creation to the beatific vision.
4. De Reductione Artium ad Theologiam ("On the Reduction of the Arts to Theology"): showing how all the liberal arts converge on and serve sacred theology.
5. Legenda Maior: the official biography of Saint Francis.

Where Thomas Aquinas's theological method emphasized Aristotelian logic and the systematic disputed question, Bonaventure's emphasized Augustinian contemplation, the Pseudo-Dionysian mystical theology, and the Franciscan affective relationship to the Crucified Christ. The two complementary methods together form what the Catholic Church has called the "great medieval synthesis."

Cardinal and death at Lyons

In 1273, Pope Gregory X created Bonaventure Cardinal-Bishop of Albano (a suburbicarian diocese near Rome). According to a traditional account, papal legates found Bonaventure washing dishes at a friary kitchen when they arrived with the cardinal's hat; Bonaventure asked them to hang the hat on a tree until he had finished. He served as a principal organizer of the Second Council of Lyons (1274), which sought reunion with the Eastern Orthodox Churches.

Bonaventure died at Lyons on July 15, 1274, during the Council. The cause of death is uncertain (some sources suggest poisoning by enemies of the reunion). He was buried at the Franciscan church at Lyons. His relics suffered destruction during the French Revolution, but a portion (his head and arm) had been previously translated; these are preserved in the cathedral of his hometown Bagnoregio.

Canonization and patronage

Bonaventure was canonized on April 14, 1482, by Pope Sixtus IV, more than two centuries after his death. He was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Sixtus V in 1588, with the title Doctor Seraphicus ("Seraphic Doctor") for the Franciscan-mystical character of his theology.

Saint Bonaventure is patron of the Franciscan Order, of theologians, of Bagnoregio, and (somewhat curiously) of bowel disorders (from a tradition of his own bodily sufferings). His feast is celebrated on July 15 in the universal Catholic Church.

For the broader Catholic understanding of doctoral status, see What is a Doctor of the Church?. For Bonaventure's relationship to the founder he venerated and biographized, see Saint Francis of Assisi. For his Dominican counterpart and theological complement, see Saint Thomas Aquinas.

Sources

Footnotes

1. For the principal modern critical biography, see Ewert Cousins, Bonaventure (Paulist Press, 1978), and Ilia Delio, Crucified Love: Bonaventure's Mysticism of the Crucified Christ (Franciscan Press, 1998). ↩