July 15: Saint Bonaventure of Bagnoregio: the second founder of the Franciscans

Saint Bonaventure of Bagnoregio: the second founder of the Franciscans 🕯️ An entire life given in answer to a single favor received as a child. Did you know that Saint Bonaventure wrote that, as a boy, he was «snatched from the jaws of death» through the intercession of Saint Francis of Assisi? Born around 1217 in Bagnoregio, in the Roman Tuscia, the son of the physician Giovanni di Fidanza and Maria di Ritella, that sick child recovered after his mother's vow to the newly departed saint of Assisi. From then on he lived, by his own admission, on borrowed life — and he devoted his whole life to repaying that debt: master in Paris, Minister General of the Franciscans for seventeen years, Cardinal-Bishop of Albano, and, forever, the Seraphic Doctor. In this video you'll discover: 📜 How the most brilliant student in Paris took the gray habit of the Friars Minor in 1243 and changed his name, Giovanni, to Bonaventure. 🏔️ Why, on Mount La Verna in 1259, he wrote «The Journey of the Soul into God» and crowned his theology in a single phrase: «Ask grace, not learning». 🎩 The scene from Franciscan tradition in which he left the cardinal's hat hanging on the branch of a tree while he finished washing his brothers' dishes. ⛪ How, on July 6, 1274, at the Second Council of Lyon, the Creed was sung in Latin and in Greek — and how he died nine days later, on July 15, attended by Pope Gregory X. His was not a life of the sword, but a life given by installments: he sustained the house another had built without ever making it his own, he wore the purple without setting aside the friar's robe, and he taught that the highest knowledge is not to understand, but to love. Of all he was, precisely this remained: the right hand with which he wrote — venerated still today in Bagnoregio. If this story has moved you to reflection, share it with someone who may need it, and subscribe to keep discovering the lives of the saints. #HistoryOfTheSaints #FidesViva #SaintBonaventure #SeraphicDoctor #Franciscans #CouncilOfLyon 📌 Chapters 0:00 The Child and the Vow 4:16 The Student Who Chose the Habit 9:06 A Letter from Rome 12:27 The Silence of the Mountain 15:44 Gratitude Made Ink 20:00 The Price of Governing 23:55 The Red Hat on the Branch 27:51 A Creed in Two Tongues 33:04 What the Fire Did Not Erase 36:22 The Hand That Wrote of Love 📚 Sources • Saint Bonaventure, Legenda Maior Sancti Francisci (1260–1263) — franciscan-archive.org • Saint Bonaventure, Itinerarium mentis in Deum (1259), Opera Omnia t. V (Quaracchi) • Doctoris Seraphici S. Bonaventurae Opera Omnia, ed. Quaracchi, 1882–1902 — archive.org • Constitutiones Generales Narbonenses (1260), ed. M. Bihl, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 34 (1941) • Salimbene de Adam, Cronica (MGH SS XXXII) · Angelo Clareno, Historia septem tribulationum • Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Paradiso XII • Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta (Second Council of Lyon, 1274), ed. Alberigo • Benedict XVI, Catechesis on Saint Bonaventure, March 3, 10 and 17, 2010 — vatican.va • Benedict XVI, Address at Bagnoregio, September 6, 2009 • Letter of the Ministers General «Saint Bonaventure: A Voice Still Relevant Today», 2024 — ofm.org • R. Manselli, «Bonaventura da Bagnoregio, santo», Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 11 (1969) — treccani.it • T. Noone and R. E. Houser, «Saint Bonaventure», Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — plato.stanford.edu • P. Robinson, «St. Bonaventure», The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907) — newadvent.org • Roman Martyrology and Roman Missal (memorial of July 15)