__Discover the medieval mystic-theologian who united reason, contemplation, and the love of Christ into a single luminous vision.__Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, the Seraphic Doctor and Minister General of the Franciscan order, stands at the very center of thirteenth-century thought. The Wisdom of Bonaventure: Doctor Seraphicus and the Mind's Journey to God traces his life from the hill town of his birth in central Italy, through the schools of Paris and his battles to defend the new mendicant orders, to his elevation as cardinal and his death at the Council of Lyon. Along the way it unfolds the great themes of his theology with patient care, opening for the modern reader a thinker whose reach across philosophy, contemplation, and church life has few equals in the medieval tradition.

Inside this volume you will find:

• A clear and unhurried account of his formation in the new universities, his discipleship to Alexander of Hales, and his rise to the master's chair at Paris
• The full architecture of his most famous work, the Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, with its six stages of contemplative ascent and its seventh transit through the cross of Christ
• His doctrine of exemplarism, the eternal Word as the inner pattern of all creation, and his theory of the divine illumination of the human mind
• The story of his retreat to La Verna, the mountain where Francis received the stigmata, and the contemplative experience that gave shape to his mature theology
• His seventeen years as Minister General, his patient reform of the Franciscan order, and his great life of Saint Francis, the Legenda Maior
• A glossary of key terms gathering the central vocabulary of his philosophy and spirituality for easy reference

Written in clear contemplative prose, The Wisdom of Bonaventure: Doctor Seraphicus and the Mind's Journey to God gives the figure of the Seraphic Doctor the patient attention he deserves. It is a companion for anyone who would walk, with one of the great masters of the Christian tradition, the long journey of the mind into God.