GESUALDI, FILIPPO. – Franciscan Conventual theologian and ascetical writer, born at Castrovillari on 23 February 1550, died at Cariati on 12 December 1618 (according to others on the 17th or 30th).
He studied in Rome, Padua, and Treviso, earning a doctorate in theology in 1581. For several years he taught philosophy and theology in Rome, Padua (at the Santo, where he founded the *scuola compiuta*, an association of piety and penance, whose name was also adopted by St Francis de Sales, then a student at the university, and of which Gesualdi became the spiritual director), and later in Naples, Palermo, and elsewhere. Secretary and later Minister General of the Order (1593–1602), he was particularly distinguished for promoting piety and various devotional practices, such as the exercise of the *disciplina*, the *corda pia*, and the *transitus* in honour of the Lord’s Passion and the stigmata of St Francis, which are still practised today in Franciscan churches. On 15 April 1602 he was appointed Bishop of Carinti and Cerenzia in Calabria. He is numbered among the Servants of God in the Franciscan Martyrology.
Gesualdi was also an excellent preacher and a prolific ascetical writer. Among his works in this field are: *Medo della oratione delle quaranta hore, col suo officio* (Padua 1592); *Modo di far la santa disciplina* (Rome 1597); *Officio della quindici gradi della Passione di Christo e della Compassione di Maria V.* (Bologna 1597); and also *Soliloqui scritturali* (Milan 1595), as well as various other ascetical-biblical commentaries, philosophical pamphlets, and a *Plutosofia*... on the art of memory (Padua 1592), which was highly regarded in oratory.
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