UBALDO d'ALENÇON. - Capuchin (in the world Léon-Louis Berson), b. 23 Dec. 1872 at Alençon, d. 5 July 1927 at Bry-sur-Marne.
Admitted to the Order in Oct. 1891, he saw his desire for the Indian mission disappointed by the sudden onset of a grave illness, tuberculosis. Ordained priest in 1898, he was prevented by his precarious health from exercising the ministry. He therefore devoted himself to historical studies and became an active contributor to the Annales franciscaines and the Etudes franciscaines.
A discerning reader of sources and endowed with great acumen in examining archival documents, his profiles of members of the Order, besides outlining, on the basis of exhaustive documentation, the events of the external lives of those whose biographies he wrote, never lack an appropriate setting and a refined psychological sensitivity. Among his writings, the following deserve particular mention: Mémoires et lettres du p. Timothée de la Flèche sur les affaires ecclésiastiques de son temps (1907), furnished with an introduction by U. and highly interesting for the history of Jansenism; Leçons d'histoire franciscaine (1918), in which he condensed the fruits of his historiographical activity; Les Frères Mineurs Capucins de Reims, published in the Travaux de
l'Académie de Reims of 1923 (vol. CXXXVII, pp. 75-235). During the First World War U. served in a hospital.