BALDINUCCI, ANTONIO, Blessed. — Jesuit, born in Florence on 19 July 1665, son of Filippo (q.v.), a literary historian of art; died at Pofi on 7 November 1717. A pupil of the Jesuits, he was lively in intellect and intense in spiritual life, and entered their ranks in 1680 through a most singular vocation. His delicate health, which troubled him during his studies, also prevented him from going on missions among the pagans, which he ardently desired. Instead, he was assigned to preaching, especially in popular missions, for which he felt himself more suited.
From 1695 until his death, he was able to evangelize thirty dioceses with 448 missions, centered in Frascati and Viterbo, achieving remarkable success. He followed the method of Fr. Paolo Segneri the Younger (d. 1713), relying on three principal means: penitential processions, Marian Congregations, and spiritual exercises for priests. He added devotion to the Madonna “Refuge of Sinners,” for which he had a painting made that he always carried with him, and to which he attributed all the good results of his work. The painting, officially crowned by a decision of the Chapter of St. Peter in 1717, is still venerated in a chapel of the Gesù in Frascati. The remains of the Blessed rest in the church of the Casa di Gesù in Florence (C. Beccari, I resti mortali del B., in Anal. Bollandiana, 41 [1923], pp. 149–54). He was beatified by Leo XIII in 1893. Feast: 7 November.
A group of 126 letters of the Blessed was published by Fr. L. Rosa, Lettere inedite del B. A.B., Prato 1899; others remain unpublished, as do the diaries of his missions and several volumes of his sermons.