750th Anniversary Death of Saint Bonaventure of Bagnoregio

The 2024 aerogram commemorates, on the 750th anniversary of his death, Saint Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (1221–1274), a Franciscan friar, theologian, and philosopher, who was named by Pope Sixtus V in 1588 among the Doctors of the Church alongside Saint Thomas Aquinas. His contribution to theological doctrine is very important: first of all, starting from St. Augustine's thought, he expresses the need to subordinate philosophy to theology, since the object of the latter is God. Philosophy, then, can only help the human search for God by bringing man back to his inner dimension. Also of Augustinian derivation is St. Bonaventure's elaboration of Trinitarian theology, which highlights how the world is a sort of book in which the Trinity from which it was created emerges.The two images chosen to celebrate him belong to the Vatican collections: the main illustration reproduces the Portrait of Saint Bonaventure, a fresco created by the Blessed Angelico and preserved in the Niccoline Chapel of the Vatican Museums; the imprint on the stamp features a detail from the fresco The Disputation of the Sacrament by Raphael Sanzio, depicting Saint Bonaventure among the figures of the Church Militant.