(Bonaventura) St., one of the brightest luminaries of the scholastic age, was born of a good family, at Bagarese in Tuscany, in 1221. His original name was Giovanni di Fidenza, but from a particular incident in his childhood he received the name by which alone he is now generally known. In 1243 he entered the order of St Francis, and after several years' study at Paris under the celebrated Alexander of Hales, he was in 1253 appointed to lecture publicly on the Sentences of Lombard. In 1255 he took his doctor's degree on the same day with Aquinas. The year following he was chosen general of his order, which he governed till his death with vigour and prudence. He is said to have declined the offer of the see of York from Clement IV., in 1265; and might on the death of that pope have been elected in his stead, the cardinals having solemnly engaged themselves to abide by the choice of Bonaventure, even if he should nominate himself. The person whom he recommended was Theobald, archbishop of Liège, at that time in the Holy Land. The new pope, who assumed the name of Gregory X., appointed Bonaventure in 1273 to the bishopric of Albano, and soon after raised him to the dignity of a cardinal. Bonaventure died July 15, 1274, while attending the second council of Lyons as legate of the pope. His remains were attended to the tomb by the pope and the whole council; they were exhumed in the sixteenth century by the Huguenots, burnt, and cast into the Saône.

Bonaventure was canonized in 1482 by Sixtus IV., and ranked in 1587 by Sixtus V. as the sixth great doctor of Bonavista the church. The city of Lyons chose him as her patron saint. The purity and gentleness of his character, and the heavenly thoughts with which his writings abound, procured him among scholastic divines the title of the seraphic doctor. By the Franciscans he is regarded as the greatest doctor of their order, and held up as a rival to St Thomas, the glory of the Dominicans. His works, printed at Rome 1588-96, in eight vols. folio, comprise commentaries on the Scriptures and on the Book of Sentences, numerous tracts chiefly on ascetic and practical subjects, sermons, letters, &c. This collection includes several apocryphal works, among which is the famous Psalter of the Virgin. His efforts to make philosophy (which with him is a combination of Peripateticism and Neoplatonism) subservient to faith, resulted in a pious mysticism which makes his meaning often obscure. Union with God he regards as the sovereign good, and this principle he has developed in his Itinerarium Mentis in Deum and his Reductio artium in Theologiam. The latter treatise is devoted to a proof of the thesis that theology is the final consummation of all science and art. Bonaventure is distinguished above all the schoolmen by his freedom from trivial subtleties, his religious fervour, and the practical tendency of his spirit. His commentary on Lombard contains a most acute refutation of the doctrine of the eternity of the world, and some new arguments for the immortality of the soul. He is eulogized by Luther as an excellent man (Bonaventura, praestantissimus vir); and characterized by Bellarmine as a doctor alike beloved by God and man.