GUBERNATIS, Domenico de. — Franciscan friar, born at Sospitello (diocese of Turin) and died at Turin in 1690. A man of wide learning, he was, after Wadding, from whom he drew much, the foremost historian of the Franciscan Order.
He took an active part in the controversies regarding the more or less strict 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* of his remains in Milan (1672).
But his principal work, on which he spent the last years of his life, is the *Orbis Seraphicus*. As chronicler of the Order, he was commissioned to write it by the Minister General Giuseppe Ximenes 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 of the internal history of the Franciscan Orders, their constitution, development and expansion from their beginnings to his own time. Volumes V and VI (the latter published only in