One fine cruise morning I am reading, in the ship's saloon, the latest issue of the Louvre's magazine Grande Galerie, whose cover shows a splendid detail from the portrait of one of the greatest mystics of the Church, Saint Bonaventure, by the Spanish pai

One fine cruise morning I am reading, in the ship's saloon, the latest issue of the Louvre's magazine Grande Galerie, whose cover shows a splendid detail from the portrait of one of the greatest mystics of the Church, Saint Bonaventure, by the Spanish painter Zurbarán, from Lyon Cathedral, where the saint's remains repose. The magazine carries a fascinating piece on the restoration of the canvas “Saint Bonaventure Receiving the Envoys of the Byzantine Emperor at the Second Council of Lyon” and on its prehistory. Bonaventura means Good Fortune! It was precisely this that Francis of Assisi cried out when the dying infant Giovanni Fidanza was brought to him, a child destined to become one of the foremost theologians of his age, the chief intellectual of the Franciscan order and, as he was known, a burning candle in the house of God