Bonaventure of Siena
Italian writer
Bonaventure of Siena (Italian: Bonaventura da Siena) was a Tuscan scribe and translator who worked at the court of Alfonso X of Castile in the 1260s, when Alfonso was claiming the Holy Roman Empire. His most famous work is a translation of the Book of Muhammad's Ladder into Latin and French.
Life
Nothing is known of Bonaventure's family or of his biography before he arrived at the court of Alfonso X in Seville. He arrived after Alfonso's election as Holy Roman emperor, along with may other expatriates from the Ghibelline city of Siena. The earliest reference to him is from 1264, when he was a "notary and scribe of the lord king". On 10 May 1266, on Alfonso X's instruction, he drew up the act by which the infante Fernando de la Cerda named the men who would represent him at his proxy marriage to Blanche, daughter of Louis IX of France.
On 18 January 1284, Peter III of Aragon named a certain Filippo Bonaventura da Siena, recommended to him by Cardinal Latino Malabranca Orsini, as a member of his familia regis. This may have been Bonaventure's son. His presence in Spain would be explained by his father's earlier contacts there, although the exact purpose of his visit is unknown.
Work
Bonaventure was commissioned by Alfonso X to translate the Book of Muhammad's Ladder into Latin and possibly also French.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5735109. VIAF identifies the subject as 282333272. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1264, 1266 and 1284.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bonaventure of Siena” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.