CATTANEO, CARLO AMBROGIO. - Jesuit, preacher, born in Milan on 7 Dec. 1645, died there on 19 Dec. 1705. He devoted the greater part of his life to preaching the Spiritual Exercises and to discourses at the meetings of the Congregation of the Good Death, listened to by every class of hearers with applause and affection; but he became especially famous for his Sunday lectures, in which he expounded to a very large and cultured audience certain texts of Holy Scripture.
All his works were published posthumously, collected from papers left behind; they therefore lack the author’s final touch, yet they are none the less welcome: *Esercizi spirituali* (Venice 1711); *Esercizio della buona morte* (Milan 1713); *Lezioni sacre* (2 vols., ibid. 1713–14); *Panegirici, orazioni funebri e discorsi varii* (ibid. 1714). The last three works were arranged and edited by the man of letters Fr. Tommaso Ceva. Numerous subsequent editions followed, even rapid ones; the latest in 4 vols., Milan 1903; noteworthy also are the translations.
Cattaneo’s preaching was always keen, incisive, rich in facts, apologues, and varied applications to the most common situations of life, attuned to the needs and failings of the times, seasoned with fine humour—especially in the *Lezioni sacre*—making him one of the most effective models of moral and didactic preaching. One of his assertions (Lezioni sacre, 1st lecture, §44) on the liceity, under certain conditions, of mental reservation provoked a bitter controversy, both offensive and defensive (cf. Sommervogel, II, cols. 892–94), yet it did not arise from the good cause he defended.