PALEOTTI, GABRIELE. — Cardinal, born in Bologna on 4 October 1522 to Alessandro and Gentile Volta; he received his doctorate in law on 14 May 1546; canon in Bologna in 1549, he stayed in Rome with Cardinal Verallo and was appointed auditor of the Rota in 1556. Pius IV wished him to accompany the cardinals legates to the Council of Trent; P. thus followed its course until its conclusion. From this period he left a Diarium (printed by S. Merkle, Concilii Tridentini diariorum..., I, Freiburg im Breisgau 1801, p. 235).
Created cardinal on 12 March 1565, he received the bishopric of Bologna on 30 January 1566, where from the outset he was one of the most zealous executors of the Tridentine reforms, establishing new regulations and devoting himself assiduously to pastoral visitations, the celebration of synods, preaching, and the teaching of the catechism. A friend of Cardinals Borromeo and Sirleto, of Burali and Aldobrandini, under Pius V he played a considerable role in the reforms of the Curia, especially in the reorganization of the Penitentiary and the Index. When Bologna was elevated to an archbishopric (10 December 1582), P. soon held the provincial Council there (1586). Having become bishop of Albano (8 November 1589), and then of Sabina, he had as coadjutor in Bologna, with right of future succession, his cousin Alfonso P. (13 February 1591). He died in Rome on 23 July 1597.
In 1550 he published a legal treatise: De nothis et spuriis, a De sacri concistorii consultationibus in 1596, and numerous ordinances, instructions, and letters, as well as an Attuale Sacramentorum and an Episcopale (1580) for the governance of the diocese; he also held synods in his two suburbicarian dioceses. A treatise in three books, De bono senectutis (Rome 1595), achieved widespread renown; in it, as he says, he had before him as a «vivum exemplar» St. Filippo Neri.