Antonio da Vercelli

ANTONIO DA VERCELLI. - Friar Minor born in the first decades of the 15th century, perhaps in Balocco (province of Vercelli), from which he would have taken his name, as some maintain, unless Balocco is a family name, as others would instead have it. He entered the Order of Friars Minor and appears to have been a lecturer in theology; he was certainly vicar of the Lombard province, a celebrated preacher and promoter of the Monti di Pietà. He preached at Orvieto in 1460; at Florence in 1464 and 1478, and here he was in contact with Lorenzo the Magnificent, whom he approached so that he might be magnanimous toward those guilty of the Pazzi conspiracy; at Parma in 1478, and once again at Orvieto in 1483, where, after pacifying the civic discords, he died in the same year.

He himself said that his speech was uncultivated and that he used a 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 sermons printed in Latin, whereas A. da V. preached in the vernacular. He left Lenten sermons, various treatises, letters, etc., partly in print, partly in manuscript and still unpublished. Of a Lenten cycle de aeternis fructibus Spiritus Sancti an index was produced very excellently in recent times (cf. Archiv. Franciscanum Hist., 36 [1943], 253-72).

Luigi Berra