BATTISTA DA CREMA. - Dominican ascetical writer and director, in the world Carioni, b. at Crema probably around 1460. He appears to have been a disciple of Blessed Sebastiano Maggi (v.). The austere Dominican began to become known in 1519, when St. Cajetan of Thiene, having returned from cooperating in Rome in the founding of the Confraternity of the Divine Love, chose him, at Vicenza, where he was staying, as his spiritual director. Out of obedience he sent Thiene first to Venice, and in 1523 to Rome, where he seems to have urged him to found the Theatines. Chosen as confessor by Ludovica Torelli, countess of Guastalla, who had been converted to a spiritual life, Fra' B. went, with an indult of Clement VII, to live at Guastalla near the Countess, assuming her spiritual direction (1529). On his advice the countess chose as her chaplain St. Anthony Mary Zaccaria, founder of the Barnabites (May 1530?), whom B. had known at Cremona and had been directing since 1528. In 1529 the countess Torelli and Fra' B. moved to Milan, and there laid the foundations of two pious associations, one of women and the other of priests, which followed a rigorous ascetical method according to the spiritual teachings of Fra' B. From these pious associations, through successive developments, the Angelics and the Barnabites originated. Fra' B.'s stay with the countess of Guastalla was harshly criticized by his Dominican confreres and by others, among them Gian Pietro Carafa (later Paul IV), but in the trial begun in 1530 his innocence was established. He died in the night between 2 and 3 January 1537, attended by St. Anthony Zaccaria.
Fra' B. is known not only as a director of souls but also as a distinguished writer of spiritual works much read in his time: La Via di aperta verità, first published at Venice in 1523, without the author's knowledge, by an admirer of his, Gerolamo Regino, hermit, full of errors and distortions of the author's thought, and republished, in corrected form, by B. himself, probably at the end of 1524 (reprint in 1544-47); Della cognitione et vittoria di se stesso, Milan 1531; Philosophia Divina, ibid. 1531; Lo specchio interiore, ibid. 1540. The Detti notabili, published at Venice in 1583, and which were formerly attributed to St. Anthony Zaccaria, seem also to have to be attributed to him.
B.'s asceticism is austere, animated by a strong combative spirit toward himself and his own passions, free of compromises with human frailty, eminently anti-egoistic. It seems, however, to leave the work of grace a little too much in the shadows, in order to bring out the active and constructive work of the free will. Also because B. praises, perhaps too insistently, the doctrine of Cassian, his spirituality was accused of semi-Pelagianism, indeed of Pelagianism. The doctrine is substantially orthodox and pure, but certain not very happy expressions can be reproached in it, and it became suspect to the Holy Office because of the abuse made of it by the Angelic Paola Antonietta Negri (v.).
Father B.'s writings were placed on the index by Paul IV Carafa in 1559, a condemnation confirmed by the Council of Trent, though with the mildest of clauses. Republished in compendium by Serafino da Fermo, Lateran canon, preceded by an Apologia, in its turn condemned, rediscovered and published by Fr. Orazio Premoli, B.'s works were removed from the Index in 1900.