BARBO, LUDOVICO. — Reformer of Benedictine monastic life and distinguished ascetical writer, born in Venice in 1381 or 1382, died there in September 1443 in the monastery of S. Giorgio Maggiore. Of an illustrious patrician family, he entered the ecclesiastical state at a young age and was appointed commendatory abbot of the monastery of S. Giorgio in Alga, near Venice, by Boniface IX. The monastery, where the Rule of St. Augustine was observed, was greatly increased in vocations through his efforts, including St. Lawrence Giustiniani, who later became its general abbot. On 20 December 1408, he was appointed by papal nomination to the Benedictine abbey of S. Giustina in Padua; Barbo devoted himself with remarkable zeal to the spiritual reform of the monastery after having professed the Rule of St. Benedict in Rimini in the chapel of S. Prisca in the Cathedral (3 February 1409).
The abbey of S. Giustina, as Benedict XV observed (AAS, 11 [1919], p. 369), became through Barbo’s work the cradle of the great Benedictine reform in Italy, from which originated the Congregation of S. Giustina... later called “Cassinense.” When Barbo took possession of it, the monastery was almost depopulated of monks and in wretched material conditions, so much so that it seemed “rather a stable than a dwelling made for men” (De initiis Congregationis S. Iustinae de Padua, in Pez, Thesaurus anecdotorum, II, part 3, p. 269, [ed. G. Campesi, pp. 13, 53]). In this pamphlet written in an expository style, Barbo recounts the beginnings of the new congregation, approved by Martin V in 1419. Numerous other monasteries joined the Congregation of S. Giustina, participating in the reform. Barbo desired a hierarchical organization for his congregation: it was governed by four visitors elected annually who carried out the decisions of the general chapter. The local abbots were elected for a limited term by the general chapter and were subject to the visitors. Perhaps his conception was influenced by the ideas of the time regarding the supposed supremacy of the Council over the Pope. Barbo, who took part in the Council of Basel (17th session) as one of the four papal legates (cf. letter of Eugenius IV, 16 December 1433), privately acknowledged such supremacy with an oath.
Barbo was also entrusted with the material and moral restoration of the abbey of S. Paolo in Rome.
Pope Eugenius IV, by a bull dated from Bologna on 19 June 1437, appointed him Bishop of Treviso; in this see, Barbo worked diligently for the reform of clerical morals.
An ascetic of action and governance rather than of study, Barbo left few writings: besides the aforementioned De initiis..., the Declarationes nonnullae in regulam B. P. Benedicti pro Congregatione Vallisoletanae in Hispania ad instar Cassin. institutae, published in 1595, and the brief but effective and notable Modus meditandi et orandi, which is rather “a collection of meditations than a method of prayer properly speaking” (P. Pourrat, La Spiritualité chrétienne, III, Paris 1927, p. 26). In this treatise, Barbo distinguishes three kinds of prayer: vocal prayer, meditation, and contemplation, which is reached through well-made meditation. To facilitate the practice of meditation, subjects are divided weekly, while the Modus meditandi was composed in Treviso between 1437 and 1443 when Barbo was already bishop, and although addressed to the monks of the Congregation of S. Giustina, it greatly influenced the Congregation of Valladolid and the monastery of Montserrat fifty years before García de Cisneros. First edition of the work in Venice 1523; Rome 1605; Cologne 1644; reprinted by the Jesuit H. Watrigant in Quelques promoteurs de la Méditation méthodique (Bibliothèque des Exercices, 59), Paris 1919. It was also published at the end of the Exercitatorium of García de Cisneros, Regensburg 1856. Italian-Latin edition in the series Scritti monastici editi dai monaci di Praglia, no. 3: Metodo di pregare e meditare.