GESUALDI, FILIPPO. - Theologian and ascetical writer of the Conventual Friars Minor, b. at Castrovillari on 23 Feb. 1550, d. at Cariati on 12 Dec. 1618 (according to others on 17 or 30 Dec.).
He studied at Rome, Padua and Treviso, taking his degree in theology in 1581; he taught philosophy and theology for several years at Rome, Padua (at the Santo, where he instituted the "scuola compuntiva", an association of piety and penance, to which St. Francis de Sales, then a student at the university, also gave its name, and of which G. is said to have been director of souls), then at Naples, Palermo and elsewhere. Secretary and later minister general of the Order (1593-1602), he was particularly deserving for the impulse he gave to piety and to various devotional practices, such as the exercise of the "disciplina", the "corda pia" and the "transitus" in honor of the Passion of the Lord and of the stigmata of St. Francis, which are still practiced today in Franciscan churches. On 15 Apr. 1602 he was created bishop of Cariati and Cerenzia, in Calabria. He is among the servants of God, in the Franciscan Martyrology.
G. was also an excellent preacher and a prolific ascetical writer. For this last activity the following are noteworthy: Metodo della oratione delle quaranta hore, col suo officio (Padua 1592); Modo di far la santa disciplina (Rome 1597); Officio delli quindici gradi della Passione di Christo e della Compassione di Maria V. (Bologna 1597); moreover, Soliloqui scritturali (Milan 1595) and various other ascetical-biblical commentaries, philosophical opuscules, and a Plutosofia... on the art of memory (Padua 1592), valued in oratory.
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Lorenzo Di Fonzo