Bonaventura
ST., an Italian friar of the Order of St. Francis, born in Tuscany in 1221. He was sent by his superiors to Paris, where he, as well as Thomas Aquinas, of the Dominican Order, became involved in contentions with the university, which denied the academical honors to individuals of the mendicant orders. It was not till 1257 that he received his doctor's degree. He had already been elected General of his Order. He retired to the convent of Mt.
Alvernia in Tuscany, where he wrote "Vita Santi Francisco," and "Itinerarium mentis in Deum," for which last he received the appellation of the "Seraphic of the "S Doctor." He died July 15, 1274, from sheer ascetic exhaustion. Dante, who wrote shortly afterward, places him among the saints of his "Paradiso." In 1482, he was formally canonized by Sixtus IV., and in 1587 was ranked by Sixtus V. as the 6th of the great doctors of the Church.