The always interesting Liturgical Arts Journal has an article about two secondary relics of St Bonaventure of whose existence I, for one, was quite unaware. These are his crosier and mitre which survive in Pisa. The article can be seen at The Thirteenth Century Mitre and Crozier of St. Bonaventure, the Seraphic Doctor
Today is the feast day of St Bonaventure who died on this day in 1274. There is an introduction to his life and writings as well as to the fate of his relics at Lyon set out by Wikipedia at Bonaventure
From what I have read and come to know about him I find his blend of the mystical with the scholastic a very appealing one. Indeed he has been presented as the Franciscan who took St Francis’ depth of mystic insight and channelled it into the disciplined system of scholastic theology. If for some Franciscans that is too limiting, for the rest of us it offers a unified theological route towards God that is illuminated by those insights beyond words.
Amongst the books by and about St Bonaventure available on Amazon I noted the recent one by Douglas Dales Truth and Reality: The Wisdom of St Bonaventure (James Clarke) about which I heard the author speak at Pusey House the other year. Although I have not so far read it I think that would be a good way into understanding the thought of the Seraphic Doctor.
I remain slightly bemused by the fact that for the year 1265-6 St Bonaventure was the Papally appointed Archbishop of York. Probably wisely he resigned, but one does wonder just what might have happened had Giovanni di Fidanza actually made it to northern England in the wake of the Baron’s Wars.
St Bonaventure, pray for us
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