GUBERNATIS, DOMENICO de. - Friar Minor, born at Sospitello (diocese of Turin) and died at Turin in 1690. A man of vast learning, he was, after Wadding, from whom he drew extensively, the greatest historian of the Franciscan Order.
He took an active part in the controversies concerning the more or less strict interpretation of the Minorite Rule, publishing various polemical writings, among them: 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.
But his principal work, to which he devoted the last years of his life, is the Orbis Seraphicus. As chronologist 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 its plan in three parts and thirty-five volumes, but he himself was able to publish only five of them (Rome and Lyons 1682–89): it deals with the internal history of the Franciscan Orders, their constitution, development, and expansion from their beginnings down to his own time. Volumes V and VI are of great importance for missionary history (the latter published only in 1886 by Fathers M. da Civezza and T. Domenichelli): De Missionibus antiquis franciscanis.