GIOVANNI di PAOLO (Johannes Pauli). - Apostle and anti-Lutheran writer of the Conventual Friars Minor, born in Alsace around the middle of the 15th century, died at Thann around 1530.
A student of the Argentinian province (Strasbourg), in 1490 he was a lecturer in Villingen; preacher in various monasteries of the Poor Clares, guardian of Strasbourg (1506-10), then in Colmar and especially in Thann, to whose convent he was affiliated. He published the writings of the celebrated Geiler (v.) of Kaysersberg and translated his Navicula fatiorum. Witty and biting in his anti-Lutheran struggle, he published the famous Schimpf und Ernst (Strasbourg 1522), which were widely read and recently reprinted (1866 and 1924).
Bibl.: A. Linsenmayer, Die Predigten des J. Pauli, in Hist. Jahrbuch (1898), pp. 873-91; C. Schroeder, in Franz. Studien, 2 (1926), pp. 393-97; L. Pfleger, J. Pauli und seine Ausgaben Geilerscher Predigten, in Archiv für Elsässische Kirchengeschichte, 1928, pp. 47-96; A. Zawart, The history of franciscan Preaching, New York 1928, pp. 415-16; L. Pfleger, s. V. in LThK. VIII, col. 19.