FRANCESCO SANSONE. - Franciscan theologian, born in Brescia to a father originally from Siena, Nannis (Joannis), in 1414; died in Florence on 26 October 1499.
He entered the Franciscans in Siena and held various offices within the Order; in 1469 he was provincial minister of the Holy Land, in 1470 of Tuscany, inquisitor in Siena, and in 1475 minister general of the Order. On 1 December 1483 he was appointed counsellor to the Empire by Frederick III. In the convent of Siena he had two cloisters built, and three in that of Brescia, as well as the sacristy; at S. Francesco in Piacenza (1471) he erected a large monument to the master Francesco Maiorni, known as the Illuminato. As minister general for 24 years, he worked for the discipline and organization of the Order, drafting the *Constitutiones pro reformatione provinciae Marchiae*, issued on 13 October 1478, and the *Ordinationes* for the entire Order (General Chapter of Casale, 1485). He promoted and protected the spread of the Observant movement. In a disputation held in Rome on the Immaculate Conception in 1477 before Sixtus IV, he so effectively refuted the objections of his adversaries that the Pope called him S.
Among his writings are remembered: *Quaestio nes super octo libros physicorum*, which Wadding mistakenly believed to be an incomplete work and published under the title *Recollectae in forma quaestionum* (Venice 1496); and, according to Papini, *Commentaria super Ethicam Aristotelis*.