SCUPOLI, LORENZO. — Theatinate ascetical writer, b. at Otranto ca. 1530, d. at Naples on 28 November 1610.
Having entered the Theatines of S. Paolo Maggiore in Naples in 1569, he was in Piacenza in 1577, where he was ordained a priest at Christmas. In 1578 he went to Milan, then to Genoa and later, in 1588, to Venice. Between 1589 and 1591 he was often in Padua, where he perhaps met the young student Francesco di Sales, who later asserted that he had received from a Theatine a copy of the Combattimento spirituale, which served him for many years of reading. Falsely denounced for an unknown offense, by decree of the General Chapter of 1585 he was reduced to the status of a lay brother. S. submitted to the harsh penance, which was remitted to him toward the end of his life, which he ended in the odor of sanctity in the convent of S. Paolo Maggiore in Naples.
Il combattimento spirituale appeared anonymously in 1589 in Venice, where S. was then residing. In 1610, a few days after his death, it was published for the first time in Bologna (it had already gone through its 50th edition) under the author’s name. The Combattimento is a “treatise on spiritual strategy,” developed according to a simple and practical ascetical method, which leads the soul to a wholly interior perfection, based on self-denial and consummated in union with God. The individual subjects are developed in the 66 chapters with solid doctrinal grounding; the most original part, and the one that more than any other justifies the title of the work, is that which offers suggestions for the exercise of the higher faculties, especially the will, revealing in the author a profound knowledge of the human spirit. Permeated by the asceticism of the Spanish school and influenced by Franciscan and Ignatian spirituality, the work of S., within those principles that constitute the heritage of Christian asceticism, nevertheless reveals the unmistakable features of the Italian spiritual school of the sixteenth century. This confirmed the judgment of historical criticism, which even today, in its great majority, claims for S. the authorship of the celebrated treatise. It should, however,
rather than be regarded as the lived experience of an author, be considered one of the fundamental treatises of spirituality, which imposed itself upon subsequent centuries.
In addition to an Aggiunta al Combattimento, S. also left two brief works: Del modo di consolare ed aiutare gli infermi a ben morire and Il modo di recitare la Corona della Madonna. The treatises De' dolori mentali di Cristo nella sua Passione, by b. Battista Varani (v.), and Della pace interiore ovvero Sentiero del Paradiso, by Juan de Bonilla (v.), are often erroneously attributed to S. and published together with the Combattimento.