CARACCIOLO, ANTONIO. — Theatine historian, brother of St. Francesco Caracciolo, of the princes of the Villa (of S. Maria) in Abruzzo; he died nearly eighty years old in the house of the SS. Apostoli in Naples on 19 March 1642. In this same house he was admitted to the Order of the Theatines by St. Andrea Avellino, and made his profession in 1586. Distinguished for erudition and holiness of life, he held the offices of general definitor and consultor to the Sacred Congregations of Rites and of the Index.
He enjoys a reputation as the first historian of the Theatines, and his Vita Cajetani Thiennei (in Acta SS. Augusti, II, Paris 1867, pp. 282–324) was published together with the Collectanea historica de vita Pauli IV and of the other two co-founders, Bonifacio de' Colli and Paolo Consiglieri (Cologne 1612). His extensive life of Paul IV (Vita e gesti di Giovanni Pietro Carafa, cioè di Paolo IV P. M.), however, remained unpublished, although it enjoyed wide circulation in manuscript (cf. Pastor, VI, p. 667 ff.).
Published posthumously were the De Sacris Ecclesiae Neapolitanae monumentis (Naples 1645), the Nomenclator, and the Propylaea in quatuor chronologos (Eremperto Longobardo, Lupo Protospata, Anonimo Cassinese, Falco Beneventano) in L. A. Muratori, RIS, V, Milan 1724, p. 1 ff. He also prepared the edition of the Vita s. Antonini abbatis, patron of Sorrento, with scholii. He also published theological, liturgical, and ascetical works, including: In Constitutiones Clericorum Regularium notae (Rome 1610), which Cardinal P. de Bérulle had reprinted for the edification of the French clergy under the title Synopsis veterum religiosorum rituum atque legum, that is, of the ancient ecclesiastical discipline (Paris 1628).