Bonaventure 1221 – 1274

Bonaventure was a 13th-century Italian Franciscan friar, theologian, philosopher, and Cardinal, regarded as one of the most important medieval Christian thinkers alongside his contemporary Thomas Aquinas. He served as Minister General of the Franciscan Order from 1257 to 1274, during which time he produced an extensive body of philosophical, theological, and devotional writings. His Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, the Mind's Journey into God, set out a Neoplatonic and Augustinian path of contemplation through nature, the soul, and ultimately the divine. He defended the Augustinian and Franciscan tradition against the increasing dominance of Aristotelianism in 13th-century scholasticism. He was canonised in 1482 and named a Doctor of the Church in 1588.

Bonaventure — Giovanni di Fidanza — was born in 1221 in Bagnoregio, north of Rome. He entered the Franciscan Order around 1243 and was sent to Paris, where he studied theology under Alexander of Hales and John of La Rochelle and incepted as master in 1254 alongside Thomas Aquinas, with whom his career would remain closely entwined.

His scholarly works include a vast Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, the Itinerarium Mentis in Deum (The Soul's Journey into God), the Breviloquium, the Disputed Questions, and the official Legenda Maior of Saint Francis. In 1257 he was elected Minister General of the Franciscans at a moment of severe internal crisis between Spirituals and Conventuals, and held that office until 1273, when he was made Cardinal Bishop of Albano.

Bonaventure represents the high Augustinian and Christocentric wing of thirteenth-century scholasticism, holding that all knowledge culminates in the soul's mystical ascent to God and resisting the more thoroughgoing Aristotelianism of his Dominican contemporaries. He died at the Second Council of Lyon in 1274 while working for reunion with the Eastern churches; he was canonized in 1482 and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1588.