The timidity with which his humility undertook the work contrasts strangely with the universal appreciation it has received at the hands of others. Thus at the end of the third volume, he writes: "I render thanks to our Lord Jesus Christ, that taking pity on the poverty of my knowledge and ability, He has enabled me to come to the end of this work. I beseech Him to aid me to go forward in my work unto the merit of obedience and the welfare of my brethren--for which two motives alone this task was undertaken." And again in the {14} Introduction to the second volume, "By the help of God's grace I have ended the Commentary on the first book, and at the instance of the Brethren must needs begin the second. . . . I do not intend to propound new opinions but to reproduce those that are generally admitted. Nor should anyone think that I wish to be the author of a new book; I am sincerely conscious and acknowledge that I am but a poor and faulty compiler." This is the language of profound humility which is all the more striking in view of posterity's verdict on our Saint, and his writings. Salimbene, [Footnote 7] a contemporary chronicler, writes as follows of Bonaventure: "He then lectured on the whole Gospel of St. Luke--a beautiful and excellent treatise: and he wrote four books on the Sentences which even to this day remain useful and esteemed. It was then the year 1248 but now the year 1284." Gerson, the learned chancellor of Paris University, is more unstinting in his praise. "Were I to be asked," he writes, "who is the most eminent amongst all the doctors, I should answer, without prejudice, 'Bonaventure'. I know not that Paris ever possessed another such Doctor." And again, "In Theology there is nothing more sublime, more divine, more salutary, nor more sweet than Bonaventure's writings". The following striking testimony of Pope Sixtus V in the Bull _Triumphantis Jerusalem_--conferring on St. Bonaventure the title {15} of "Doctor"--adumbrates his two salient characteristics as embodied in his title "The Seraphic Doctor". "In his writings," the Pope's words run, "Bonaventure united to the deepest erudition an equal amount of the most ardent piety, so that whilst enlightening his readers, he also moved their hearts, penetrating to the inmost recesses of their souls." [Footnote 7: "Chronica," p. 129.]