“For, shining like a morning star in the midst of a dark cloud, he enlightened by the bright rays of his pure doctrine and holy life those who lay in darkness and in the shadow of death, and thus guided them onwards by his bright shining to the perfect day.”

The life of a Saint, written by a Saint, as the life of St. Paul of the Cross written by his companion, the Blessed Strambi, speaks to the heart with a vital power which no work of merely natural genius can command. It has a twofold operation of the Spirit of God with it, both in the subject and in the writer. Such is, in an eminent degree, the Life of St. Francis, by St. Bonaventure—the life of the Seraphic Patriarch written by the Seraphic Doctor. Among uninspired books there are few that breathe more sensibly the love of God. There is a light and a sweetness about it which is not of this world. The anecdote of St. Thomas visiting St. Bonaventure’s cell, and finding him in ecstasy, is too well known to need recital. St. Bonaventure was then writing the Life of St. Francis, and it was on these very pages that he was intent when St. Thomas drew back from the door, saying, “Let us leave a Saint to work for a Saint.” It is in this same spirit of love and reverence that we ought to read this book.

᛭ Henry Edward,
Archbishop of Westminster