harmonize with the holiness and
learning of his subsequent life, but conjecture is not history. In the
absence of recorded facts we are condemned to silence. The biographers
to whom we might look for enlightenment on this matter are silent.
They seem so intent on proclaiming the world-wide fame of his mature
years and recording his great achievements on behalf of the Church and
the Franciscan Order, that they have overlooked the {6} comparatively
obscure period of his youth. This was no uncommon fault with the
chroniclers of that period. We have another very striking example of
it in the insoluble obscurity in which the biographers of the renowned
Duns Scotus have left the question of his birthplace and nationality.
We do not know where Bonaventure acquired the rudiments of learning;
we do not know with anything like certainty the name of the convent in
which he made his novitiate. Our certain knowledge of him dates from
his appearance in Paris in the year 1242.

Certain of our Saint's words, however, lift the veil, though somewhat
slightly, from the shadows that obscure his early years. Writing in
after years against a detractor of the Rule he professed, Bonaventure
thus gave expression [Footnote 3] to the trend of his earlier
thoughts: "Do not take offence," he wrote, "that in the beginning, the
brethren were simple and unlettered. This ought rather to raise the
Order in your esteem. For my part I acknowledge as before God that
what chiefly drew me to love the life-work of Blessed Francis was that
it bore so close a resemblance to the beginning and growth of the
Church. As the Church began with simple fishermen and afterwards
numbered renowned and skilled doctors, so too did it happen in the
Order of the Blessed Francis. In this way God makes it {7} evident
that the Institute was founded not by the prudence of men but by
Christ."

[Footnote 3: "Epistola de tribus Quaestionibus,"
Tom. VIII, p. 336. No. 13.]

With his mind penetrated with that miracle of his early years we can
readily conceive how the spiritual awakening started by the Franciscan
movement seized on Bonaventure's thoughts. His mother's vow,
harmonizing with his youthful desires, would clothe those impulses
with the glamour of the virtue of religion. It is certain that our
Saint entered the Franciscan Order as a youth; all the ancient
chroniclers testify to this. The precise year of his reception,
however, is a debatable question. To the learned edit