- Lived:
- c. 1221–1274 · Bagnoregio, Paris, and the roads of a worldwide order
- Tradition:
- Medieval Christian; Franciscan; the great heir of Augustine and the mystics in the age of Aristotle
- The Big Idea:
- The whole universe is a ladder into God — every creature a footprint, every mind a mirror — and at the top of the climb, love goes where the intellect cannot.
- In their words:
- "Ask grace, not instruction; desire, not understanding; the groaning of prayer, not diligent reading; the Spouse, not the teacher; God, not man; darkness, not clarity."
- If you remember one thing:
- While his friend and rival Aquinas built a cathedral of reason on Aristotle, Bonaventure built the other cathedral — one where the heart holds the master key — and ran a global religious order while he did it.