Dionigi of Piacenza

DIONIGI OF PIACENZA. - Capuchin missionary of the Carli family; at the age of fifteen he took the habit of the Order at Cesena on 25 April 1652. With Father Michelangelo Guattini da Reggio he reached the Congo in 1668, and he did missionary work in the province of Bambu for a year.

Fallen ill, he returned to Italy in 1671; in that year his Viaggio nel regno del Congo was published in Reggio Emilia, which also contains the letters of his companion Father Michelangelo, who died on 9 April 1668; the work went through many editions and was included in Italian, French and English collections of travels; Father Samuele Cultrera, Un morto che cammina (Parma 1926 and 1937), presents it in a modernized rendering. In November 1678 he set out again as vice-prefect of the mission in Georgia, arriving at Tiflis in February 1680. He worked at Gori, from where he set out on a journey to Italy in May 1684. At Bassano, in 1687, his work Il Moro trasportato nell'inclita città di Venetia, ovvero curioso racconto de' costumi, riti e religione de' popoli dell'Africa, America, Asia ed Europa was published, of which the first book reproduces the Viaggio nel Congo; a German version appeared at Augsburg in 1693. In 1687 he is found in the mission of California; according to an archival note, he would have died at Lorea di Levante in 1694.