Bonaventure

Bonaventure was a Franciscan theologian, professor at Paris beside Aquinas, minister general of his order at thirty-six, and a cardinal at the Council of Lyons, where he died. Where Aquinas followed Aristotle, Bonaventure followed Augustine and Francis, and The Journey of the Mind to God, written in 1259 on the mountain where Francis received the stigmata, is the classic of Franciscan mysticism: six stages of ascent, from the traces of God in creation through the image of God in the soul to the darkness where understanding gives way to love. Dante puts him beside Aquinas in Paradise, each praising the other’s founder.