St. Bonaventure is proclaimed a Doctor of the Church by the Roman Catholic Church. He was Cardinal-Bishop of Albano, Minister General of the Friars Minor, born at Bagnorea in the vicinity of Viterbo in 1221; died at Lyons, 16 July, 1274. Bonaventure's theological writings may be classed under four heads: dogmatic, mystic, exegetical, and homiletic. Only a small part of Bonaventure's writings is properly mystical. These are characterized by brevity and by a faithful adherence to the teaching of the Gospel. Perhaps the best known of Bonaventure's other mystical and ascetical writings is a series of forty-eight devout meditations on the life of Christ.