Pierre Bersuire

Who was Pierre Bersuire?

Pierre Bersuire, also known as Pierre Bercheure and Pierre Berchoire, was a French author of the Middle Ages. A Benedictine, he was a translator, encyclopaedist, and the author of several works, including the Ovidius Moralizatus, a work of mythography. The Gesta Romanorum, a Latin collection of anecdotes and tales, is sometimes attributed to him.

Born at Saint-Pierre-du-Chemin, in the area of Vendée in Poitou, he entered monastic orders in his youth rather than take a university degree. He first became a Franciscan but subsequently joined the Order of St. Benedict at Maillezais Abbey.

In 1320 he accompanied his abbot to Avignon, at the time the seat of the papacy. He remained in Avignon for 12 years as a protégé of the papal vice-chancellor Cardinal Pierre des Prés, bishop of Praeneste. He steadily accumulated offices of various monasteries and priories. He met Petrarch at Avignon; both men mention the other in terms of high praise.

In the 1340s, Bersuire became a student at the University of Paris and met Petrarch there again. The Italian poet was on an embassy to the French court. Bersuire translated into French Petrarch's reassembly of Livy's history of Rome. This translation was performed at the command of John II of France in the 1350s. Around 1400, Pero López de Ayala later translated Livy's Decades for Henry III of Castile, working from a French version by Bersuire. It was published at Paris in 1514 in three volumes.