Bernard of Besse

Bernard of Besse was a French Friar Minor and chronicler.

He was a native of Aquitaine, with date of birth uncertain; he belonged to the custody of Cahors and was secretary to St. Bonaventure. He took up the pen after the Seraphic Doctor, he tells us, to gather the ears the latter had dropped from his sheaf, lest anything of so great a memory as that of St. Francis might perish.

Works

His Liber de Laudibus Beati Francisci, composed about 1280, besides a resume of some of the earlier legends, contains brief and valuable information about the companions of St. Francis and the foundation of the three Franciscan Orders, and is the only thirteenth-century document which specifies the first biographies of St. Francis. and is very probably the author of the Speculum Disciplinae and of the Epistola ad Quendam Novitium erroneously attributed to St. Bonaventure (See Bonav. Opera Omnia ed. Quaracchi, 1898, VIII, 583 sqq. and 663 sqq.).