ALESSANDRINO de LA CIOTAT. - Capuchin mystical writer, Honoré Colombo in the world, born at La Ciotat (Lower Provence) in 1629; he took the religious habit in 1647 and died at Marsiglia in 1706. Most devout, he was superior in various convents, spiritual director, and zealous preacher. He left only one, but precious, work: Le parfait dénuement de l'âme contemplative... avec un traité des extases, ravissements, révélations et illuminations, published in Parigi in 1680 and in an enlarged second edition at Marsiglia the following year.
The treatise is divided into three parts: the first deals with detachment from earthly things by means of voluntary poverty, in order to devote oneself to meditation on divine things; the second, with affective prayer and active and passive contemplation; the third, the most important, with mystical contemplation, which consists in the union of the soul with God through complete stripping away of everything and of itself, 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 in order to live only by the life of Jesus Christ.” The sound doctrine and lucid exposition earned A. the warm praise of Fr. Piny (v.).
raire du sentiment religieux en France, VII, Parigi 1928, p. 88; J. De Blois, s. V. in DSp, I, col. 302. Egidio Caggiano