John of Fidanza, surnamed Bonaventura⁠—who “postponed considerations sinister,” or made things temporal subservient to things spiritual, and of whom one of his teachers said that it seemed as if in him “Adam had not sinned,”⁠—was born in 1221 at Bagnoregio, near Orvieto. In his childhood, being extremely ill, he was laid by his mother at the feet of St. Francis, and healed by the prayers of the Saint, who, when he beheld him, exclaimed, “ O buona ventura! ” and by this name the mother dedicated her son to God. He lived to become a Franciscan, to be called the “Seraphic Doctor,” and to write the Life of St. Francis; which, according to the Spanish legend, being left unfinished at his death, he was allowed to return to earth for three days to complete it. There is a strange picture in the Louvre, attributed to Murillo, representing this event. Mrs. Jameson gives an engraving of it in her Legends of the Monastic Orders ,