FRANZINI, ANTONIO. — Ascetical writer, born in Mariana (Corsica) on 12 January 1696, died in Naples on 27 April 1764. Admitted to the Congregation of the Mission in Rome, already a priest, on 27 October 1723, he served for several years as director of the novitiate of his community.
At that time he wrote the *Diario spirituale* (Naples 1778), a selection of edifying incidents drawn from the lives of the saints and appropriately linked by ascetical reflections. It went through several editions; in French it was translated by the Sulpician Lasausse and published under the title: *L'heureuse année, ou l'année sacrifée par la méditation des sentences et des exemples des saints* (Rouen 1798).
Bibl.: [E. Rosset], *Notices bibliographiques sur les derniers de la Congr. de la Mission*, Angoulême 1878, pp. 115-16. Annibale Bugnini