GUASTELLA, DIOCESE of. — City and diocese in the province of Reggio Emilia. It has an area of 319 sq. km., with 70,000 inhabitants, all Catholics, 29 parishes served by 73 diocesan and 8 religious priests, one seminary, 2 male and 33 female religious communities (1949).
Tuscan scholars, and consequently secretary of the Accademia della Crusca. In ’52 he married Nunzia Becherini, by whom he had four children. The work of G. (6 vols., Prato 1894–1902; VII, Florence 1912) encompasses subjects in historical erudition, textual criticism, philology, and lexicography, and reveals a «restrained and elegant» writer, and even more a man of singular piety.
His studies on Savonarola (in Opere, I, pp. 109–183) and on Tasso (ibid., V, pp. 803–923), his biographies of illustrious men—among which the essay on F. Ozanam deserves mention (ibid., II, pp. 127–72)—the reports and eulogies read before the Società della Colombaia and the Accademia della Crusca, his writings on art and his researches into documents concerning the Florentine cathedral, Brunelleschi’s dome, and Giotto’s bell tower, as well as those on Arnolfo, on Beato Angelico, and on his contemporaries L. Mussini, G. Dupré, and L. Bartolini, give us a measure of his method of research and the acuity of his historical investigations.
He devoted himself at length to the editing of texts, publishing Le lettere spirituali e famigliari di s. Caterino de' Ricci (Prato 1851), Le lettere di A. Macinghi-Strozzi (Florence 1877), Le lettere di Ser Lapo Mazzei (ibid. 1880); and he was greatly drawn to the art of translation: he rendered into the vernacular the Storia di s. Francesco di Assisi, by Emilio Chavin de Malan, the Vita di F. Ozanam and the Lettere ad alcuni giovani by p. Enrico Lacordaire, and, at the request of p. Lodovico da Casoria, Lo stimolo del divino amore attributed to s. Bonaventura. In ’66 he published the translation of the Imitazione di Cristo «which remains one of the most singular documents of the Tuscan language» (I. Del Lungo). He also composed brief monographs on s. Margherita da Cortona and s. Rosi da Viterbo, and, on the occasion of the canonization (1867), the Vita di s. Leonardo da Porto Maurizio. He wrote more than 40,000 letters, preserved in the twelve volumes of the Sbozzalettere; a selection of these forms part of the Carteggio (Opere, VII). His life was inspired by the Franciscan ideal—and he became a tertiary at the age of twenty—finding the secret of his spiritual program in «remaining continually in the presence of God and doing everything for his glory, willingly submitting in all things to the will of God and not concerning oneself too much with the things of the world». On his assiduous search for religious truth, Tommaso wrote: «G. finds religion in history and history in religion».
Regarding the life of G. and his reputation for holiness, the informative process was introduced in 1937, and subsequently proceedings were initiated concerning his writings and the absence of public cult (1940). On 3 April 1938, the remains were transferred from the Misericordia of Florence to the church of S. Domenico in Prato.