ASTENGO, GIAMBATTISTA. — Priest, born in Savona in 1817, died near Balaclava on 3 May 1855. Educated in the Piarist Schools, after spending some time among the Capuchins of Genoa, he was obliged, for health reasons, to enter the secular clergy. His ardent patriotic sentiment and his very priestly vocation impelled him to become a military chaplain and to assist the dying and the wounded on the battlefields of Peschiera and Novara (1848–49). Although ill, he embarked to take part in the Crimean campaign and died of cholera, a victim of his duty.
BIBL.: M. D'Ayala, I Piemontesi in Crimea, Florence 1858; E. Michel, s. V. in Diz. del Ris. Naz., II, p. 125.
Paolo Dalla Torre