The Seraphic Doctor steered Franciscans and a council
Born Giovanni di Fidanza around 1221, Bonaventure rose from Paris master to Minister General of the Franciscans and Cardinal Bishop of Albano. Canonized in 1482 and named a Doctor of the Church in 1588, he died at Lyon in 1274 after helping push Greek and Latin churches toward union.
Bonaventure was an Italian Franciscan bishop, cardinal, scholastic theologian, and philosopher. He served as seventh Minister General of the Friars Minor and, for a time, Bishop of Albano. Sixtus IV raised him to the altars on 14 April 1482; later Sixtus V enrolled him among the Church's Doctors with the nickname Seraphic Doctor. His feast is 15 July. Many medieval works once credited to him are now filed under Pseudo-Bonaventure. One treatise long printed under his name, De septem itineribus aeternitatis, is now known to be the work of Rudolf von Biberach.
He was born at Civita di Bagnoregio near Viterbo in the Papal States to Giovanni di Fidanza and Maria di Ritella. He later wrote that Francis of Assisi's prayers saved him from an early death. Entering the order in 1243, he studied at Paris under John of Rochelle and possibly Alexander of Hales, held the Franciscan chair in 1253, and after secular-mendicant disputes received the master's degree in 1257—having already lectured on Peter Lombard's Sentences and earned the degree equivalent in 1255. Thomas Aquinas took his Paris degree in the same ceremony, and the cardinal Hugh of Saint-Cher became both a friend and an influence.
After defending mendicants against critics, he became Minister General. Chosen Archbishop of York on 24 November 1265, he was never consecrated and resigned in October 1266. The 1260 Narbonne chapter's ban on publishing without superiors' leave later colored judgments of Roger Bacon's constraints. Bonaventure helped secure Pope Gregory X's election, received the Albano cardinalate, and died suddenly at the Second Council of Lyon in 1274 after contributions toward Greek-Latin reunion. Whether he was poisoned is unsettled: the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia hints at it, while the 2003 New Catholic Encyclopedia is silent. His remains had an eventful afterlife. When they were moved to a grander church in 1434 the head was said to be incorrupt, and Lyon adopted him as patron; Huguenots burned the body in 1562, the head disappeared during the Revolution, and only his writing arm survives, kept in a church at Bagnoregio.
Source: Bonaventure
