Laurence Costelloe

Born in 1870, Laurence Costelloe was a Franciscan priest, usually identified in print as Rev. Fr. Laurence Costelloe, O.F.M. The reliable details that appear consistently are modest but clear: he belonged to the Franciscan order, and he wrote religious biography rather than fiction.

He is chiefly remembered for Saint Bonaventure: The Seraphic Doctor, Minister-General of the Franciscan Order, Cardinal Bishop of Albano, a short early-20th-century life of the medieval Franciscan theologian and saint. In the book's prefatory material, Costelloe is described as already deceased by the time the volume appeared, which fits the commonly given dates 1870–1909.

Because so little biographical information is easy to confirm from dependable online sources, his surviving reputation rests mostly on that published work and its afterlife in public-domain libraries and audiobook catalogs. Even so, the book shows a writer trying to make an important Franciscan figure understandable to ordinary readers, combining reverence with a straightforward historical style.