ALESSANDRO da BREMA. - Franciscan, author of a commentary on the Apocalypse. He was a canon-scholar at the cathedral of Bremen; he entered the Order of Friars Minor and remained there as a lay brother. He lived and died (1271) in the convent of Staden (Saxony); hence he is also called A. da Staden.
His Commentary deserves attention because it appears that he was the first to apply the historical method to individual events in ecclesiastical history: thus, long before Peter Auriol and Nicholas Lyranus. Moreover, he attributes the visions of the Apocalypse from chapter 20, verse 5, to St. Francis and St. Dominic and to the Orders founded by them. Eight manuscript copies of the Commentary are known, five of which are richly illustrated.
BIBL.: A. Kleinhans, De Commentario in Apocalypsin Fr. Alexandri Bremensis, in Antonianum, 2 (1927), pp. 280-334; M. Hugler, Der Bilderkreis in den Handschriften der Alexandri, Apokalypse, ibid., 9 (1934), pp. 85-150, 260-308; A. Wachtel, Die weltgeschichtliche Apokalypse-Auslegung des Minoriten Alexander von Bremen, in Franziskusische Studien, fasc. 3 e 4, Werl in V. 1937.