KLEINSCHMIDT, BEDA. - Franciscan, art historian, born at Brakel (Westphalia) on 12 Oct. 1867, died at Paderborn on 17 March 1932. He entered the Order in 1888; he was ordained priest in 1892; between 1915 and 1919 he governed as provincial the Saxon province of the Holy Cross of the Friars Minor.
Of exceptionally broad humanistic learning, which he demonstrated in his highly varied publications, numbering more than 170, he devoted himself especially to the study of art history in relation to iconography and liturgical problems. His major work, Die Basilika S. Francesco in Assisi, is a very extensive monograph on the Assisi basilica in three large volumes, of which the first two, published in Berlin
(1915-26), contain exceedingly rich illustrations; the third (ibid. 1928) is devoted to sources and documents. His book on Franciscan art, S. Franziskus von Assisi in Kunst und Legende, had a great number of editions, beginning in 1911.