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Catholic Saints
St. Bonaventure
00:24:10
A Franciscan cardinal bishop and contemporary of St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure is an excellent example of saintly humility. Known as the "Seraphic Doctor," St. Bonaventure loved God above all else. He is known for many works, including The Life of Saint Francis and The Journey of the Mind to God. His feast day is July 15.
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A
You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live and share their faith.
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Hi, welcome to Catholic Saints. My name is Mary McKeon. I work here at the Augustine Institute, and today I am with Dr. Chris Mooney from professor of theology at the Augustine Institute. Thank you for joining us.
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A
Thanks, Mary. It's great to be able to talk about our saint today.
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B
Today we're gonna talk about Saint Bonaventure. So the point of Catholic Saints is to look at our friends, our saint friends in heaven as inspiration for our own lives today. So I'm excited to share with you a little bit about Saint Bonaventure and learn from Dr. Mooney all about him. So Saint Bonaventure, he is a Franciscan friar. What else. What are. When did he live? What are some basic biographical facts should know about him to sketch out his life?
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A
Yeah, St. Bonaventure is a great medieval saint, but not a household name, unless maybe you live in Bonaventure, New York, or went to St. Bonaventure University in Bonaventure, New York. Most people don't know Bonaventure, but he was almost an exact contemporary of Thomas Aquinas, who's much more known by Catholics. But Aquinas and Bonaventure are actually kind of two great representatives of two different traditions in the high Middle Ages. In the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas a Dominican, and Bonaventure a Franciscan. So Bonaventure was. He was not actually born Bonaventure. That's a name he took on later. A religious name. It seems like a religious name. He was born Giovanni in Italy around the year 1221 through so high Middle Ages, just about 10 years or so after St. Francis had founded the Franciscan Order. The Franciscan order, like the Dominican order, was one of the most revolutionary and important. The founding of the Franciscan Order, one of the most revolutionary and important events in the high Middle Ages, it kind of turned the church upside down. These mendicant, wandering friars who wanted to bring the truth of the gospel through preaching and the grace of confession to the people where they were. So Bonaventure, I mention this because Francis is so important to Bonaventure. So if you know Saint Francis, Saint Bonaventure is one of Francis first, early. I shouldn't say first, but one of his earliest great disciples. And in fact, one of the most important stories about Bonaventure is that when he was young, maybe young as five or 10 years old, he was Very sick. And the story is that Bonaventure actually was healed by the prayers of St. Francis. Some people, the legend was sometimes that Francis himself had healed Bonaventure, but it seems more likely that actually at that point, Francis had already died. And so his parents had prayed to St. Francis, and through his intercession, Bonaventure was healed. And so Bonaventure had a great gratitude to Francis, but he also had a really great academic ability. And so he was a really successful student, both intellectually and in his piety. His mentor at the University of Paris, Alexander of Hales, said that one would think, looking at Bonaventure or John at that time, looking at John, one would think that Adam had never sinned because he had such a great, great holiness and simplicity of soul. Now, oftentimes people think of the simplicity of the Franciscans, their commitment to poverty, their commitment to the humility of Christ. And actually, early ON in the 13th century, there were a lot of concerns about whether or not Franciscans could actually be professors. In fact, St. Francis had initially opposed it, but the brothers convinced him otherwise, which was good news for the whole history of the church, because we wouldn't have Bonaventure otherwise. Because it was when Bonaventure was a student that many of his professors took on the Franciscan habit. They became Franciscans as well. And it was around that point, when Bonaventure was a young man, that he became a Franciscan as well. And that's when he took on the name Bonaventure, which means good fortune. It seems to have been a title that he took out of gratitude for Francis and his mentors.
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B
Okay, so just to clarify some biographical information about the saints, he. His parents, prayed to, St. Francis, even potentially before Francis was declared a saint?
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Probably. Yeah, before he was declared a saint. And shortly, only a few years after he had died.
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Okay. But they exist. They had a small overlap of their lives. Francis and Bonaventure was just a. Giovanni was just a young child.
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Exactly.
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And also St. Thomas Aquinas was. Do you know, did St. Thomas Aquinas in Bonaventure?
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Oh, they knew each other. Yes. Yeah. They were students together. They were professors together in Paris at the same time.
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B
Interesting.
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Yeah. There are lots of different stories and legends about interactions between Bonaventure and St. Thomas. One of the best ones is that in the 13th century, the feast of Corpus Christi was instituted for the first time. The pope wanted to celebrate, have a feast to celebrate the recent, relatively recently defined dogma of transubstantiation. So we have this great gift of the Eucharist, great clarity in the 13th century about what the Eucharist is. So the Pope wanted to institute this feast and actually, according to tradition, commissioned Bonaventure and Aquinas, among others, to both write propers for the feast. Now, some of you might know if you've ever heard the Tantum Ergo sacramentum and things like this, this is what Thomas Aquinas wrote. But the story is that when Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure both presented what they had, Bonaventure insisted that Thomas go first. He recited what he had composed, and Bonaventure, in tears, tore apart what he had written.
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B
Wow. It was too great.
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So it's actually, I think, a great. I was very sad by this. I would love to have what Bonaventure had written, but it's a sign of his great humility. So the two of them, yeah, they did know each other. A good example of a. I mean, they weren't exactly, you know, side by side friends. They had such massive commitments to their orders, but they did know each other. So one of these great examples of how close some of the saints in history were, you know, Francis having had such an influence on Bonaventure as a child and Bonaventure being friends with St. Thomas. So.
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B
Yes, yeah. The parallel of their lives is what I noticed as well. Would you say it'd be correct to say Bonaventure to St. Francis was Aquinas to St. Dominic in a sense?
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Exactly. I know that's a great parallel.
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Yes.
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But, you know, when they were both in. Both at the height of their career, the height of their academic career, you know, Thomas Aquinas, a professor in Paris, and Bonaventure as well, both who had very promising academic careers before them, that took a very radical turn, because when bonaventure was around 40 or so, when he and St Thomas were both teaching in Paris, Bonaventure was asked to be the seventh minister general of the Franciscan Order. So he got pulled out of his intellectual and academic career to devote himself to serving the Franciscan Order. And he accepted, and it left him very little time for doing the kind of work that he loved and was good at. But the Franciscan Order was at, you know, it was very early in its history, but it was actually at a very difficult time. There had been. There was such excitement around the Franciscan Order that even several different kinds of heresies about the nature of the church had arisen. In particular, this one early Franciscan named Joachim de Fiore, who was condemned by the Church for some of his writings. And there were big debates about how the commitment to poverty should be lived out. And actually one of the things that Bonaventure did that he's. That also I think marks his sanctity, is he helped steer the Franciscan order during this very difficult time. But always, always with this characteristic humility that I was just mentioning. There's also a tradition that a few years before he died, when Bonaventure was appointed a cardinal bishop, that the delegation who came to him to appoint him cardinal bishop found him. It's either washing dishes or chopping firewood outside the convent. And as he was washing the dishes, he said, no, hang the hat on that tree there. I have to finish this first. So the red cardinal's hat hanging from the tree while Bonaventure finished the dishes. So. And this was what Bonaventure devoted the rest of his life to. And he to, you know, again, one more parallel between him and St. Thomas. They both died actually in the Same year in 1274, also both died young and they were in different ways on their way to the Council of Lyon where they were going to be theological representatives. So very sadly, one of the most tragic councils in history. Because it's because of the Council of lyon that both St. Thomas and Bonaventure died. We don't know the circumstances of Bonaventure's death, but many have speculated that he was actually very sorrowfully poisoned because, possibly because of some suspicion about his commitment to the reconciliation of the east and the west and the state of deep division between the Eastern and Western church in the 13th century.
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B
So some follow up questions on all that you shared. So with Saint Bonaventure, what in the High Middle Ages, why was it such a fruitful time of these new mendicant orders emerging? What was going on culturally, spiritually, for it to be a season ripe for these new orders emerging?
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Yeah, yeah. You know, there's so much we could say about that. It would take us, it would take us all the way back. Yeah, it would take us all the way back to Francis and, and Dominic themselves. You know, it's hard not to say, though you asked for, you know, what was so fruitful, but I think in many ways it was actually, it was so unfruitful. And Francis and Dominic, in very different ways, both experienced many of the weaknesses of the Church in some ways, personally. So Dominic more in seeing the failure of the traditional monastic orders to convert the heretics, namely the Albigensians, and Francis, you know, there's stories about how Francis grew up in a very kind of wealthy and comfortable life and was very happy to live comfortably and with sort of all the pleasures that his family's wealth could give to him, and realized the emptiness of this. And I think actually saw how. How comfortable the Church had become in its wealth and riches. And that's part of the reason that the Franciscans had such a charism of poverty. That was the big emphasis for Francis, and it was one that someone like Bonaventure as a Franciscan, wanted to take up. So, you know, there was these orders had such a huge influence on the 13th century, but they really came out of weaknesses in the church.
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Interesting. Yes. In particular, charism, almost as that antidote to help solve the weaknesses of the time.
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Exactly. Yeah.
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Interesting. Another question. What would be some of the key writings of Saint Bonaventure if someone wanted.
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To learn about his writing? Yes. So Bonaventure wrote a lot of different works, but perhaps I may mention two of the most famous one would be his life of St. Francis.
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Okay.
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So in part out of gratitude to Francis, Bonaventure writes one of the earliest lives of Francis. We have exactly one of the earliest lives of Francis we know of. And so if you want to learn more about Francis, learning from Bonaventure would be a great way. In fact, this is another sort of quasi legendary story. But traditionally it was said that Aquinas had seen Bonaventure writing this, the Life of Francis, and said, don't bother him. Let a saint write the life of a saint. So anyway, but I think that's actually a great way of looking at it. If you want to learn about St. Francis, you can learn from St. Bonaventure. See how the saints describe the saints.
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Yes.
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So this is one, His Life of Francis. That's a very famous one. That's accessible.
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Pause there. What a neat person to write that biography. Because there were still people who knew Francis directly, I'm assuming, who were still alive that he could have conversations with to learn about the saint. So a very hopefully accurate biography of St. Francis.
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Yes. I mean, it's a different style than the kinds of biographies people would write today. More. I mean, it's hagiography as opposed to sort of a stricter history. Okay, but. But it's still. It's still great. Another work of Bonaventure that's very famous is a more mystical or contemplative work, but it's had a huge influence in the history of Christian spirituality. It's a very classic Work, and it's called Journey of the Mind to God. Sometimes you'll come across the Latin title itinerarium, which is a Latin word for journey, but journey of the Mind to God. And it's Bonaventure, at a very difficult point in his leadership of the Franciscan order, went to Mount Alverna in Italy, where Francis had received the stigmata. So Francis, famously, at this mountain in prayer, once had a vision of a seraph, the highest order of angels. The six winged seraphs you might recall from descriptions in Scripture. And the seraph, through this sort of blazing vision of the seraph. Sorry, Francis. Excuse me. Received the stigmata, the wounds of Christ. And Bonaventure wanted to contemplate, wanted to enter into that same contemplation and went to Mount Alverna, and that's where he began the itinerarium, the Journey of the Mind into God.
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B
And is that where I saw he has a title. Is it the Seraphic Doctor or the Doctor?
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A
Yes. Yeah, great question.
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What does that mean?
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So, yeah, Thomas Aquinas is often referred to as the angelic doctor because of the great depth of his insight. And, you know, of course, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas are both some of the few doctors of the Church that we have, our greatest teachers put forward by the Church. But Bonaventure is often called the Seraphic doctor, and it comes from the seraph. The seraph is often thought of. Well, the seraph is considered the highest order of angel in the Old Testament. They're the most mysterious, the most distant, the most elevated angels. You know, some of the highest prophetic visions involve the seraphim, but their name in Hebrew comes from this sense of burning, their deep and tremendous burning charity. And so I think one of the reasons there's maybe when people call Bonaventure, when the tradition is called them, the seraphic doctrine, sort of, you know, to highlight, well, Thomas Aquinas can be the angelic doctor, but the seraphic doctor is the highest.
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So goes into the Franciscan divinity.
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Exactly, exactly.
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Picking it up.
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But I think actually the best way of understanding this is because, like the seraph itself, like this angel, so close to God that the angel is on fire with the love of God. Bonaventure, too, held the love of God above everything else. Beautiful. And so even I think you can actually pick this up. Even though Bonaventure was a professor, was an academic, the way that he writes, exactly the way that he writes always prioritizes the pursuit of the love of God. And so, anyway, but you can find this, I think, in his Journey of the Mind into God. Because it's supposed to be a book to, like a guide for spiritual meditation, if you could call it that. I mean, you know, it's in some ways difficult for a modern reader to read, but it is a classic work. And it's divided into six stages. Six stages of contemplation, where you start with contemplating God in the exterior world. And then those are the first two stages. And then move interiorly to contemplate God through the mind. Those are the second two stages. And the last two stages bring you to the contemplation of God himself. And each of these orders, within those sort of three parts, there are two stages, so six total. And each of them sort of goes one step beyond the other. So the fifth stage is the contemplation of God. And the sixth stage is the even higher contemplation of the Trinity.
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B
So are there other key aspects of Franciscan spirituality that you will see in his writing of Even the way he depicts the life of St. Francis or, you know, as he mentioned, the itinerarium with contemplation for God. Other key aspects of Francis, Franciscan spirituality, he really helped flesh out.
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A
Yeah, so Franciscan spirituality, it's. I mean, I couldn't speak for the whole of Franciscan spirituality, but one great. I think one central aspect of Franciscan spirituality is the imitation of Christ, especially the imitation of Christ in his humility and in his poverty. And one of the ways that this comes out in Bonaventure's writings is his focus on Christ doing theology, orienting all your thoughts around Christ. One of Bonaventure's other famous works is called the Reduction of the Arts to Theology. And it was Bonaventure as a professor, trying to give an account of how, as a Christian thinker, you can see all of the different arts being related to God. And that's what it means, reduction of the arts back to theology, back to the knowledge of God. And Bonaventure had this. He sort of uses this framework continually of how all of the arts first emanate from God by arts means not just sort of, you know, music and poetry, but all the different kinds of disciplines. So all of the arts first emanate from God, and then you recognize how they exemplify some truth about God. And then in that recognition, you bring the knowledge of the arts back to God in consummation. So emanation, exemplarity and consummation. And Bonaventure thought this was actually a reflection of the Trinity that All things come from the Father, that the Son exemplifies everything and that the Holy Spirit brings all things back to God. And at the center of this, the crux of this, of course, is the Son is Christ. And so Bonaventure thought that really all human knowledge revolved around Christ. In fact, you see, in the reduction of the arts to theology, Bonaventure thinks of God as a great artist. You know, that all human arts, all human artists, are attempting in some ways to imitate that great artist, the Father, and his great work of art. If you want to know what the Father's great work of art is, it's Christ himself. And so this is the perfect expression of the mind of God, the perfect demonstration of the kind of artist that God is. And so if you want to know God, this is the way through knowing Christ. That's why Bonaventure said that if you know nothing but Christ, you know everything. And I think this is a really strong thing for, you know, an academic to say. Yes, that's true, Doctor. Exactly. Exactly. But centering everything on Christ was interesting. Centering all of your thoughts, all of your desires, all of your longings for.
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B
Christ and all of the reality that you gaze upon.
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A
Exactly, yeah. So you could see this as a meditation on the words of Paul, that we have the mind of Christ. So that's what Bonaventure wanted.
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B
Great, great. I also noticed Bonaventure lived in this time period of great tensions. Would you mind sharing a little bit about how he was a reconciler you mentioned earlier with the east, the west, or within some of the tensions within the Franciscan order, as he was the seventh minister? How was he that uniter or reconciler in his leadership?
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A
Mostly I think by steering a kind of level and moderate path. You know, the first thing that Bonaventure did as minister general of the Franciscan order was to send out a letter to all the Franciscans. And it was difficult, too, because his predecessors seem to have sort of strayed in one direction or another, kind of too extreme. And Bonaventure wanted to take all of the great gifts of the Franciscans and moderate them. And so I suppose, yeah, moderation would sort of be the first thing that Bonaventure did. We don't know what Bonaventure would have done for the reconciliation of Eastern and Western Christians because he had died before the council, but it does seem like that was a major part of his intention.
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B
Very good. Interesting. Well, thank you. As we're concluding, is there any practical takeaway that as Catholics we can learn from Saint Bonaventure. You mentioned spirit of humility or any other, you know, last thought about Saint Bonaventure you'd like to share.
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A
Yeah, maybe we could. Maybe just not a new thought so much as just tying together two things. You know, the example that Bonaventure gave of humility in his own life, humbly accepting the, you know, the role that he had because it was a service to the church, even though it didn't advance his career, you know, and he's not as famous a theologian as Thomas Aquinas because of it still, you know, hundreds of years later. That doesn't mean he's not as good of a theologian. I just mean famous. But, you know, he didn't have the time, but he did a great work on behalf of the church and the Franciscan order. But this humility in his personal life, I think flowed out of his devotion to Christ and his desire to see everything, everything through Christ. And this was. This was in a way his. His, you know, his way of discharging his. At the same time, his great debt of gratitude to Francis.
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B
Beautiful.
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A
Who lived the same kind of life.
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B
Yes.
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A
Saints can imitate saints. That's. That's maybe a good way of putting it. Saints can imitate saints in their imitation of. Of the humble Christ.
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B
Yes. Beautiful. Thank you. And I highly recommend reading the biography St. Bonaventure wrote to learn more about. More about St. Francis and. How do you pronounce it? The itinerarium.
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A
Itinerarium, yeah. Journey of the mind of God. I only mention that in case someone can't find it.
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B
Yes.
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Yeah.
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B
Yes. Well, thank you for. Thank you for joining. Thank you for joining us today. We hope you learned something new about Saint Bonaventure and Saint Bonaventure. Pray for us.
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A
Pray for us. You can watch these interviews in video format by visiting formed.org formed is an online Catholic streaming service created by the Augustan Institute and Ignatius Press with award winning studies and parish programs, inspiring audio content, movies, ebooks, and family friendly kids programming to support the mission of the Augustine institute. Please visit missioncircle.org.