CASTELLANO (DE CASTELLO), ALBERTO. - Dominican erudite historian and ascetic writer, a native of Venice, probably belonging to the Venetian convent of Sts. John and Paul. He distinguished himself as an editor of various ecclesiastical and biblical texts as well as legislative, canonistic and historical texts of his Order. In a letter of 1500 addressed to Gaetano, vicar general of the Order, he says that for twenty years he had been charged 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, is now dedicated to Gaetano. Quétif and Echard therefore consider C. in 1507 a mature man and they conjecture his death after 1521, and precisely in 1522.
He edited the Pontificale romano (Rome 1497), the Biblia latina cum pleno apparatu (Venice 1506), Seronines b. Zenonis Veronensis ep., Homiliae et admonitiones b. Caesarii Arelatensis ep., Sermo de laudibus B. V. Mariae (ibid. 1508), Biblia cum concordantiis (ibid. 1519), then – probably – Tabula super privilegia papalia Ordini Praedicatorum concessa. Chronica brevis (ibid. 1504); and certainly the Regula b. Augustini ep.; Constitutiones Ordinis Praedicatorum (ibid. 1507), Rosario de la gloriosa Vergine Maria (with woodcuts, ibid. 1521 and often again). In the Tabula privilegiorum C. relies on the table compiled by Francesco Pipino, in the Cronaca on that of James of Soest (d. 1426 [E. Martène, Veterum scriptorum ampl. collectio, VI, Paris 1729, cols. 344-96]) with additions down to 1504. This chronicle later became the Chronicon Ordinis which is found, with various reworkings, appended to the Dominican constitutions down to 1690.
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Angelo Walz