BERNARDO da BESSA (BESSE). - Franciscan of the 13th century, travel companion and secretary of St. Bonaventure, whose example and doctrine inspired both his life and his historical and ascetical writings on religious discipline, which were very prudent and balanced and left to his confreres. He belonged to the province of Aquitaine and was custos of Cahors, where he probably died between 1300 and 1304.
He wrote: *Liber de laudibus b. Francisci*, on the life of the Seraphic Father and his first companions (ed. P. Ilarino da Lucerna, Rome 1897; and in *Anal. Francisci.*, 3 (1897), pp. 600-710), with a continuation in the *Chronica Ministrorum Gen. O. Min.* (part 1, up to ca. 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* to Franciscan novices, long attributed to the Seraphic Doctor (ed. in *Opera omnia s. Bonaventurae*, VIII, Quaracchi 1898, pp. 583-623).