Gubernatis, Domenico de

GUBERNATIS, DOMENICO de. - Friar Minor, b. at Sospitello (diocese of Turin) and d. at Turin in 1690. A man of vast erudition, he was, after Wadding, from whom he drew much, the greatest historian of the Franciscan Order.

He took an active part in the controversies over the more or less rigid interpretation of the Minorite Rule, publishing various polemical writings, among which: Prospetto di vera religione (Rome 1676 and 1681); Umbra illuminata (ibid. 1687); Antiquioritas franciscana ad libram historicae veritatis examinata (Lyons 1685). He was also a preacher, and a Quaresimale (Milan 1672) survives from him.

But his principal work, on which he spent the last years of his life, is the Orbis Seraphicus. Being chronologer of the Order, he was commissioned to write it by the minister general Giuseppe Ximenez Samaniego. In the Idea Orbis Seraphici (Rome 1688) he announced the plan of this work in three parts and thirty-five volumes, but he himself was able to publish only five (Rome and Lyons 1682-89): it treats the internal history of the Franciscan Orders, their constitution, development and expansion from their beginnings up to his own time. Vols. V and VI (the latter published only in 1886 by Fathers M. da Civezza and T. Domenichelli) are of great importance for missionary history: De Missionibus antiquis franciscanis.

Stanislao Majarelli