John Brugman
[Image:Jan brugman.jpg|thumb|Brugman preaching. Engraving from Hermanus Schouten's Het Vaderlandse Geschiedenis Boek, 1788]
John Brugman, was a 15th-century Franciscan friar who became a renowned preacher in the Netherlands.
Biography
Brugman was born at Kempen in the Electorate of Cologne, towards the end of the preceding century. He became a lector of theology, Vicar Provincial and one of the founders of the Cologne Province of the Observants, a reformed branch of the Friars Minor. For twenty years his name was celebrated as the most illustrious preacher of the Low Countries. The saying still exists in that region, "to speak like Brugman", meaning to speak eloquently. A friend of Denis the Carthusian, it was at his suggestion that the latter wrote his work: De doctrinâ et regulis vitae Christianæ, dedicating it to Brugman. Brugman also supported the foundation of the Brothers of the Common Life, a congregation, devoted to the interests of education, established by two priests, Gerhard Groote and Florentius Radewiyns. He addressed them in the two letters which are still extant to strengthen them in the persecution to which they were subjected.Brugman died at Nijmegen in the odour of sanctity on 19 September 1473 and is commemorated in the Martyrologium Minoritico-Belgicum.