Okay, honestly, I've cheated a little bit. I just took a retreat and this allowed me to read over two and a half books and write notes on them. One of them was Bonaventure's The Soul's Journey To God and another was Michael Banner's Christian Ethics: A Brief History. I'll write about these books later, but the one I'm working on right now is Bonaventure's Tree of Life. For now, that's what I'll be posting on.
The Tree of Life is really a life of Christ, emphasizing the passion material. It's pretty good, and I'm about halfway through, so I encourage you to read along with me. It is difficult to find this volume unless you get the book on Bonaventure from the Classics of Western Spirituality. But check your library-- that's where I found the copy I'm using. If anyone finds it on the internet, let me know. I tried and failed.
Bonaventure was one of the premier scholars of the Franciscan tradition. He is known as one of the great doctors of the church, alongside Aquinas. But Bonaventure was much more devotional than most of the doctors. His main inspiration from Francis was the ecstasy that Francis experienced which granted him the stigmata. Bonaventure wanted to have a way to repeat this experience, so he wrote The Soul's Journey to God to explain this.
However, Bonaventure also was inspired by Francis' strict following of Jesus' life. And that is what inspired Bonaventure's Tree of Life. The symbol of the Tree of Life as the life of Jesus became widespread in Europe after this volume, and many imitations and graphs of the Tree of Life were done.
In reading it, however, I just want to focus on Jesus, not on the theology of the middle ages. So, let's move ahead...
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