Jean de Beaune

Jean de Beaune was a Dominican inquisitor in Carcassonne during the early 14th century who played a role in precipitating the Apostolic poverty controversy of the period.

[1][2] As related by Nicholas the Minorite,[3] in 1320 de Beaune was ordered to carry out a harsh sentence of solitary confinement against Spiritual Franciscan and heretic Bernard Délicieux, who died in his custody.

[4] In 1321, de Beaune arrested a Beguine, or lay associate of the Franciscan Order, for heresy in Narbonne, accusing her of asserting that Christ and his followers had owned no possessions either individually or in common.

[5] A local Franciscan lector named Talon Berengar objected, invoking Pope Nicholas III's 1279 Papal Bull Exiit qui seminat, which proclaimed that "the poverty obliged by the rule was taught and lived by Our Lord.

[5] Historian David Burr suggests that the confrontation between Jean de Beaune and Talon Berengar "has an almost mythic quality" because the theological and political dispute between them, though they were minor figures themselves, went on to open a major rift between the Franciscan Order and Catholic Church.