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; a canon in Bologna in 1549, he stayed in Rome at the house of Cardinal Verallo and was appointed auditor of the Rota in 1556. Pius IV wished him to accompany the cardinal legates to the Council of Trent; P. thus followed its proceedings until its close. 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 he was from the outset one of the most zealous executors of the Tridentine reforms, giving new ordinances, assiduous in pastoral visitations, in the celebration of synods, in preaching and in the teaching of the catechism. A friend of Cardinals Borromeo and Sirleto, of Burali and of Aldobrandini, he had under Pius V a large part in the reforms of the Curia, especially in the reorganization of the Penitentiary and of the Index. When Bologna was elevated to an archbishopric (10 December 1582), P. soon celebrated there the provincial Council (1586). Having become bishop of Albano (8 November 1589) and then of Sabina, he had as coadjutor in Bologna with future succession his cousin Alfonso P. (13 February 1591). He died in Rome on 23 July 1597.
He published in 1550 a juridical treatise: De nothis et spuriis, a De sacri concistorii consultationibus in 1596 and numerous ordinances, instructions, letters, 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) enjoyed wide renown, in which, as he says, he had before him as a «vivum exemplar» St. Philip Neri.
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Pio Paschini