Saint Bonaventure at the Council of Lyon

In 1274 Pope Gregory X called a council at Lyon, above all to bring the Greek Church of Byzantium back into union with Rome, and the Franciscan theologian Bonaventure, whom he had made a cardinal the year before, was one of the men who prepared it. Zurbarán shows him seated on a dais in a cardinal's red biretta and cape, the churchmen pressing in around him with open hands. Among them is a man with a white band marked with black crosses over his shoulders, the sign Spanish painters of the time used for a Greek churchman. The saint was about 53 that year, yet Zurbarán painted him as a young man. The union was proclaimed in July 1274. Bonaventure died in Lyon a few days later, before the council closed, and within a decade the Byzantine Church had rejected the agreement.