Bonaventure

Bonaventure (c. 1217–1274), born Giovanni di Fidanza at Bagnoregio in central Italy, studied arts and theology at Paris and entered the Franciscan order there. He became a master of theology in 1257, the same year in which he was elected minister general of the order, which he led for seventeen years. He was made cardinal-bishop of Albano in 1273 and died during the Second Council of Lyon. He was canonized in 1482 and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1588.

His theology is Augustinian in temper: all knowledge is ordered to the soul's return to God, and creatures are read as traces and images of the Trinity. He commented on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, wrote the official life of Francis, and shaped the doctrine and spirituality of the Franciscan school, the Bonaventurian tradition that later writers in this library, such as Gaudenzio da Brescia, set out to defend.

The library holds the Breviloquium, a compact summary of his theology; the Itinerarium mentis in Deum, his best-known work; De reductione artium ad theologiam; the Lignum vitae; and an early inaugural lecture on the Sentences. The Itinerarium is the natural place to begin.