GESUALDI, FILIPPO. — Theologian and ascetical writer of the Conventual Friars Minor, born in Castrovillari on 23 February 1550, died in Cariati on 12 December 1618 (according to others, on 17 or 30 December).
He studied in Rome, Padua, and Treviso, receiving his degree in theology in 1581; for several years he taught philosophy and theology in Rome and Padua (at the Santo, where he founded the “school of compunction,” an association of piety and penance, which was also joined by s. Francesco di Sales, then a student at the university, and of which G. is said to have been spiritual director), and later in Naples, Palermo, and elsewhere. Secretary and then minister general of the Order (1593–1602), he was particularly deserving for the impetus he gave to piety and to various devotional practices, such as the exercise of the “discipline,” the “corda pia,” and the “transitus” in honor of the Passion of the Lord and the stigmata of s. Francesco, which are still practiced today in Franciscan churches. On 15 April 1602 he was appointed 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. With regard to this latter activity, the following works may be noted: 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); in addition, Soliloqui scritturali (Milan 1595) and various other ascetical-biblical commentaries, philosophical pamphlets, and a Plutosofia... su l'arte della memoria (Padua 1592), esteemed in oratory.