ANTONIO da VERCELLI. - Franciscan friar born in the first decades of the 15th century, perhaps in Balocco (province of Vercelli), from which he may have taken his name, as some claim, if Balocco is not a family name, as others instead maintain. He entered the Order of Friars Minor and seems to have been a lecturer in theology; he was certainly vicar of the Lombard province, a renowned preacher, and a promoter of the Monti di Pietà. He preached in Orvieto in 1460; in Florence in 1464 and 1478, and there he was in contact with Lorenzo the Magnificent, intervening with him on behalf of the kings of the Pazzi conspiracy; in Parma in 1478, and once again in Orvieto in 1483, where, after pacifying the city’s discord, he died the same year.
He himself claimed that his speech was unrefined and that he used rough Latin; and A. Galletti writes that the decline of Franciscan oratory «appears even more serious in him» (L'eloquenza dalle origini al sec. XVI, Milan 1938, p. 259), evidently referring to his Latin sermons in print, while A. da V. preached in the vernacular. He left behind Lenten cycles, various treatises, letters, etc., some printed, some still in manuscript and unpublished. A Lenten cycle on the eternal fruits of the Holy Spirit was excellently tabled in recent times (cf. Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 36 [1943], 253-72).