BARTOLOMEO (CORDONI) da CASTELLO. - Franciscan ascetical writer, born at Città di Castello, of the Cordoni family, in 1471; he was a pupil of Poliziano in Florence; after the death of his wife, he entered the Observant Friars Minor at S. Maria degli Angeli (Assisi) in 1504, and there, as later at Perugia, he formed a small school of spirituality, writing for his disciples the famous treatise De unione animae cum supereminenti lumine. Having gone as a missionary to Africa, he carried out a wide apostolate among the Moors and suffered greatly for the faith (1534); he died in Mauritania on 9 April 1535. Proclaimed “blessed” by popular acclamation.
The doctrine set forth in his treatise De unione animae, in the form of a dialogue between God (divine love), the soul, and reason, is especially inspired by s. Bonaventura, Ubertino da Casale, and Iacopone da Todi; but it is also strongly personal, and in certain respects somewhat extreme. In three parts, B. discusses divine love, the various ways (paths) and exercises for acquiring II. The work, half Italian and half Latin, was published at Perugia in 1538 by a disciple of B.; after the 2nd ed. of Milan of 1539 (edited by p. Girol. da Molfetta, who passed from the Observants to the Capuchins and then to Calvinism), it was placed on the Index (1584 and 1600).