BONAVENTURA of Peraga, Blessed. — Of the family of the counts of Peraga, from whose Roman stock descended the Paduan Badoer (and he himself was called of Padua), an Augustinian, born in Padua on 26 June 1332, died in Rome, probably on 29 July 1385.
He founded, at the behest of Innocent VI, the theological faculty at Bologna. Elected prior general in 1337, he followed, during the Great Schism, the party of Urban VI, who created him, on 28 September 1378, cardinal deacon of the title of St Cecilia. As legate in Poland, he blessed the marriage of King Ladislaus and greatly strengthened the party of Urban. As nuncio in Hungary, he reconciled King Sigismund with his people. Returning to Italy, he drafted, with a cardinalial commission, the statutes of the theological faculties. He was assassinated while going to St Peter’s, by assassins of the tyrant of Padua, Francesco da Carrara, a relative of his, who could not forgive him his opposition to his attempts to violate the immunities of the clergy. He was buried in S. Agostino. The title of blessed, recognized for him within the Order, has not yet been sanctioned by the Church.
A correspondent and friend of Petrarch, from whom he received, on the occasion of the death of a brother, a consolatory epistle and of whom he composed the funeral eulogy in Arquà, he enjoyed the deferential and fervent esteem of St Catherine of Siena, who, before the Pope, urged his election as cardinal. Blessed Bonaventura of Peraga was the author of numerous ascetical writings that were attributed to St Bonaventure of Bagnoregio: among them the *Meditations on the Life of Christ*, which at the time exercised a wide influence on religious sentiment.