ALESSANDRINO of LA CIOTAT. - Capuchin mystical writer, born Honoré Colombo, at La Ciotat (Lower Provence) in 1629; he took religious vows in 1647 and died at Marseille in 1706. Pious and devoted, he served as superior in various convents, as a spiritual director, and as an earnest preacher. He left behind a single but precious work: *Le parfait dénuement de l'âme contemplative... avec un traité des extases, ravissements, révélations et illuminations*, published in Paris in 1680 and reissued in an expanded second edition at Marseille the following year.
The treatise is divided into three parts: the first concerns detachment from earthly things through voluntary poverty, in order to devote oneself to meditation on divine matters; the second treats affective prayer and active and passive contemplation; the third, the most important, deals with mystical contemplation, which consists in the soul’s union with God through complete stripping away of all things and of the self, so as to live only by the divine life. Mystical life is a tomb in which the contemplative soul dies to natural life and to its own actions, so as to live only by the life of Jesus Christ. The sound doctrine and lucid exposition earned A. the warm praise of Fr. Piny (v.).