Born north of Rome in the year 1217, the one we know as Bonaventure was baptized Giovanni de Fidanza. Tradition tells us that he received the name Bonaventure (bona - "good", venture - "event") when as a child he was cured of a life threatening illness through the prayers of St. Francis of Assisi. Bonaventure entered the Franciscan Order in 1243. His precocious talent was immediately apparent, and he began to teach publicly in the Franciscan school at the University of Paris in 1248. Bonaventure's academic tenure was brief, for in 1257 he was elected Minister General of an increasingly divided Franciscan Order.

Bonaventure, like St. Francis, had a love of nature and went on to say that it is through created things that God speaks to us and gives us a glimpse of himself. Bonaventure writes:

"Just as you see that a ray of light entering through a stained glass window is colored in different ways according to the different colors of the various parts, so the divine rays shine forth in every creature in different ways and in different properties."
"Creatures are shadows, echoes and pictures of that first most perfect Principle.... They are vestiges, representations, spectacles proposed to us and signs divinely given so that we can see God."

Bonaventure's world is a world infused with the presence of God. Bonaventure's world is also infused with the presence of Christ, in whom we see most clearly our God present in the world.

Bonaventure was canonized a saint in 1482 by Pope Sixtus IV who wrote at that time, "Bonaventure was great in learning, but no less great in humility and holiness. His innocence and dove-like simplicity were such that Alexander of Hales, the renown doctor whose disciple Saint Bonaventure became, used to say that it seemed as though Adam had never sinned in him." In 1588 Bonaventure was declared a Doctor of the Universal Church with title "Doctor Seraphicus" or "Angelic Teacher". It is supposed that he was given this title because of his great depth of insight into spiritual things which he left as his legacy.

Today St. Bonaventure is depicted in statues and drawings with a Cardinal's hat and the bishop's crosier (shepherd's staff), and sometimes a crucifix. He was made a bishop and cardinal one year before his death in 1274, though he is best remembered as a spiritual teacher. His feast day is July 15th.