BRULEFER, ETIENNE. – Franciscan theologian, born at St-Malo in Brittany in the first half of the fifteenth century; died before the end of the same century. He entered the Conventuals at Dinant. His true surname was Pillet; he was called B. because of his polemical ardor in defending the controversies of the faith. A disciple of the great Guglielmo di Vorillon, he followed his Bonaventurian-Scotist tendency. A Doctor of Theology, he taught for several years at Paris, Mainz, and Metz. In 1487 he is mentioned as a theologian and preacher at the synod and in the cathedral of Mainz. It was in this city that he seems to have passed from the Conventuals to the Observants. He then returned to France, either to recover his health or to defend the Observant reform in Brittany.
The fruit of his lengthy teaching consists of the Formalites in doctrinam Scot (Paris 1480, 1485, 1490); the Tractatus identitatum et distinctionum in doctrinam doctoris subtilis (Basel 1501); the Commentaria in 4 libros sententiarum s. Bonaventurae (Venice s. a., Basel 1507); and the Opuscula theologica (Paris 1500). Among these opuscula there is also a Tractatus de excellentissima paupertate Christi et apostolorum eius, which Protestants believed they could use in their attacks against the papacy, but B.’s orthodoxy was already vindicated by Catholic writers.