LUDOVICO DA BESSA

LUDOVICO da BESSA. – Capuchin, sociologist, in the century Alfonso Eliseo Chaix, born in Besse-sur-Issole on 17 October 1831 and died in S. Remo on 8 October 1910. He began his social activity in Angers, which made him one of the pioneers of this form of apostolate. In 1877 he founded in that city the first People’s Bank of France and in 1882, in Paris, the Popular Mutual Credit for the benefit of workers and merchants. As early as 1875 he had founded the « Société protectrice du travail et de la vertu », the vanguard of French social action. The subversive laws of Combes (1903) forced him to take refuge in S. Remo, where he devoted himself to studies of mysticism, on which he published numerous writings. His masterpiece is La science de la prière.