CORDONI, BARTOLOMEO da CITTÀ DI CASTELLO, blessed. — An Observant Minor of the Umbrian province, born in 1471 of a noble family, he died near Tunis in 1535, probably on 10 (or 9) August. He was a pupil of Poliziano in Florence; having married, he had two daughters, but after his wife’s death he became a Franciscan in the convent of S. Maria degli Angeli (May 1504). He assisted plague victims at Terni (1526) and Gubbio (1527). A missionary in Morocco (1534), he was beaten on account of the faith; the following year he encouraged the Crusaders of Charles V in their assault on the fortress of La Goulette (Tunis), defended by the Barbary forces. Because of the eminence of his virtues, he was venerated as blessed.
His theological disciple, Ilarione Pighi of Borgo S. Sepolcro, with the approval of Cardinal Grimani, published posthumously (Perugia 1538) the mystical treatise De unione animae cum supereminenti lumine, written in dialogue form, partly in Latin and partly in Italian. The Capuchin Girolamo da Molfetta prepared a second edition of it: Dialogo della unione spirituale de Dio con l'anima, dove sono interlocutori l'amor divino, la sposa anima et la ragione humana (Milan 1539), with the approval of the inquisitor of Milan. Subsequently, a printed broadside was circulated in which, by means of geometrical figures, a new way of praying was taught, drawn from the epilogue, probably by another author. The Holy Office condemned (8 March 1654) the book and the epilogue. They were nevertheless reprinted in Venice in 1593 and 1598 (?), with a false indication of the author: Fra Bartolomeo da Castello, Capuchin; a new condemnation by the Holy Office followed (29 January 1600, published on 7 August 1603), and again in February 1647 mention was made of a “little book”: Dialogo abbreviato dell'unione spirituale di Dio con l'anima. Because of these censures, the Dialogo is still on the Index.
C. offers a profound and fervent analysis of divine love, which leads the soul to union and transformation in
God; of the means or ways of attaining it: humility, faith, the Eucharist, self-denial, infused Grace, the gift of love; and of the operations of the soul fixed in love. He draws from the Holy Fathers and the scholastics, but above all from Jacopone da Todi and Ubertino da Casale. He protests his complete adherence to the judgment of the Church; the first editor points out the opposition of certain confrères to the doctrines of the pious master—those, for example, concerning the exaltation of faith over works, the perpetual Mass which the loving soul celebrates in Christ, and the “inspiration” between God and the soul by which it generates and offers Christ to the Father—which, in an atmosphere of Protestant doctrinal upheaval, could lend themselves to equivocal interpretations; moreover, the actual abuses induced by the “Epilogue” provoked the condemnation. This was not noticed by the annalist Giuseppe da Cannobio and the bibliographer Bernardo da Bologna, who attribute the work to Girolamo da Molfetta, probably confusing him with the celebrated preacher and polemicist Giacomo da Molfetta.