GALATINO, PIETRO. - Franciscan theologian, born at Galatina (Lecce) around 1460, said by some to have belonged to the Colonna family, by others to the Mongio family. He died in Rome around 1540 and is buried in Aracoeli. A religious of the province of S. Niccolò, of which he was elected minister in 1518, he moved to Rome, where he spent most of his life, as chaplain and familiar to Cardinal Lorenzo Pucci, and later to Cardinal Francesco De Angelis Quiñones. He devoted himself to the study of the Greek, Chaldaic, and Ethiopian languages. He formed friendships with learned persons in the Roman milieu, such as Giovanni Pocke, whom he calls his teacher of the Chaldaic language, and had relations with Leone X and Paolo III, as well as correspondence with Massimiliano I, Carlo V, etc. It is said, but not proven, that he was a professor at the University of Rome.
He wrote many works, but the greater part still remains unpublished, preserved in codd. Vat. lat. 3190, 4582, 5567-81; Ottob. lat. 2366. The De optimo principe, hitherto known to bibliographers only by name, is preserved in cod. 1366 of the Biblioteca Angelica in Rome. His principal work is the De arcanis catholicae veritatis, in defense of Giovanni Reuelin (several editions). The author is not free from cabbalistic and Joachimite ideas, especially in his commentary on the Apocalypse.