FRANZINI, ANTONIO. – Ascetical writer, born at Mariana (Corsica) on 12 January 1696, died at Naples on 27 April 1764. Already a priest, he was admitted to the Congregation of the Mission in Rome on 27 October 1723, and for several years was director of his community’s novitiate.
During that period he wrote the Diario spirituale (Naples 1778), a selection of edifying episodes drawn from the lives of the saints and suitably linked by ascetical reflections. It went through several editions; in French it was translated by the Sulpician Lassaune and published under the title: L'heureuse année, on l'année sanctifiée par la méditation des sentences et des exemples des saints (Rouen 1798).
BIBL.: [E. Rosseti], Notices bibliogr. sur les écrivains de la Congr. de la Mission, Angoulême 1878, pp. 115–16. Annibale Bugnini