BERNARDO da BESSA (BESSE). - A thirteenth-century Franciscan, travelling companion and secretary of s. Bonaventura, whose example and teaching inspired him in his life and in the historical and ascetical writings on religious discipline, very prudent and balanced, which he left to his confrères. He belonged to the province of Aquitaine and was custodian of Cahors, where he probably died between 1300 and 1304.
He wrote: Liber de laudibus b. Francisci, on the life of the Seraphic Saint and of his first companions (ed. by Ilarino da Lucerna, Rome 1897; and in Anal. Francisc., 3 (1897), pp. 600-710), with its continuation in the Chronica Ministrorum Gen. O. Min. (part 1, up to about 1297 or 1304); a lost treatise, De proposito Regulae, against the zealots; and, with the same moderation and under Bonaventurian influence, the famous Speculum disciplinae, addressed to Franciscan novices, formerly attributed to the Seraphic Doctor (ed. in Opera omnia s. Bonaventurae, VIII, Quaracchi 1898, pp. 583-623).