CASTELLANO (de Castello), Alberto. — A historical scholar and ascetical writer of the Dominican Order, originally from Venice, probably belonging to the Venetian convent of SS. Giovanni e Paolo. He distinguished himself as an editor of various ecclesiastical, biblical, legislative, canonistic, and historical texts of his Order. In a letter of 1500 addressed to Gaetano, the vicar general of the Order, he states that for twenty years he had been entrusted by the Masters General Torriani (d. 1500) and Bandelli (d. 1506) with the correction of books to be printed, and that Bandelli entrusted him with the edition of the Constitutions, which, not yet ready at Bandelli’s death, was now dedicated to Gaetano. Quétif and Echard therefore consider C. a mature man in 1507 and conjecture his death after 1521, specifically in 1522.
He supervised the edition of the Pontificale Romanum (Rome 1497), the Latin Bible cum pleno apparatu (Venice 1506), the Sermones of St Zeno of Verona, the Homiliae and Admonitiones of St Caesarius of Arles, the Sermo de laudibus B. V. Mariae (Venice 1508), the Biblia cum concordantiis (Venice 1519), probably the Tabula super privilegia papalia Ordinis Praedicatorum concessa, the Chronica brevis (Venice 1504), and certainly the Regula S. Augustini ep., the Constitutiones Ordinis Praedicatorum (Venice 1507), and the Rosario de la gloriosa Vergine Maria (with woodcuts, Venice 1521 and often thereafter). In the Tabula privilegiorum, C. drew on the table compiled by Francesco Pipino, and in the Chronica on that of Giacomo di Soest (d. 1426 [E. Martène, Veterum scriptorum amplissima collectio, VI, Paris 1729, cols. 344–96]) with additions up to 1504. This chronicle later became the Chronicon Ordinis, which appears in various reworkings at the foot of the Dominican constitutions until 1690.