Bonaventure

Life

Bonaventure was born in Bagnoregio, near Viterbo in central Italy. Sources give his year of birth as either 1217 or around 1221. His birth name was Giovanni di Fidanza. According to tradition, he fell gravely ill as a child and was healed after his mother sought the intercession of Francis of Assisi.

After completing his studies in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Paris, he entered the Franciscan Order (Order of Friars Minor) around 1243; some sources date his entry to 1244. He then studied theology under the Franciscan theologian Alexander of Hales. While teaching Scripture and theology in Paris, he defended the mendicant orders, religious orders that held no property and lived by begging and donations, which were then under criticism within the university.

On February 2, 1257, he was elected the seventh Minister General of the Franciscan Order. That same year, through the intervention of Pope Alexander IV, he was formally recognized as a master of theology at the University of Paris. In 1273 he was made a cardinal and appointed Bishop of Albano, and in May 1274 he resigned as Minister General. He died on July 15 of that year in Lyon, where the Second Council of Lyon was then in session.

Ministry and Achievements

• Leadership of the order: During roughly seventeen years as Minister General, he revised and codified the order's constitutions in 1260. He also worked to resolve conflicts within the order.
• Legenda Maior: This biography of Francis, completed around 1263, is regarded as one of his principal works.
• The Journey of the Mind to God (Itinerarium Mentis in Deum): Written in 1259, around the time he visited Mount La Verna, a site closely associated with Francis, this work describes six stages by which the soul ascends to God, beginning with creatures (the world God has made), passing through its own interior life, and culminating in union with Christ crucified. These six stages are compared to the six wings of the seraphim described in Isaiah 6.
• His other works include the Commentary on the Sentences, the Breviloquium, biblical commentaries, and sermons.

Theologically, he stood in the Augustinian tradition and held that knowledge should lead to a greater love of God. Pope Sixtus IV canonized him in 1482. In 1588 Pope Sixtus V declared him a Doctor of the Church and gave him the title "Seraphic Doctor." His feast day in the Catholic Church is July 15.

Influence on the Korean Church

Within the Catholic Church in Korea, his life and spirituality have been the subject of sustained study, including academic conferences held by a Franciscan research institute and studies published by priests. The Journey of the Mind to God was published in Korean by Numen in 2012. On the Protestant side, The Christian Literature Society of Korea is reported to have published the book in 1982 under the title United with God. In Korean Protestantism he is read chiefly as the author of a classic of medieval spirituality, and his direct influence on doctrine or church polity has been limited.

Assessment

The Catholic Church regards him, together with the Dominican Thomas Aquinas, as one of the leading representatives of medieval Scholastic theology. According to one explanation, because conflicts within the Franciscan Order intensified again after his death, his canonization came considerably later than that of his contemporary Thomas Aquinas.

Protestant assessments are divided. Some consider his passion for seeking God and his Christ-centered piety worthy of emulation. Others, from the perspective of post-Reformation theology, which emphasizes the grammatical-historical interpretation of Scripture, contend that medieval mysticism, with its heavy use of symbolic (allegorical) interpretation, cannot be accepted uncritically.