BAPTIST OF MANTUA (SPAGNOLI), BL.

Also called John Baptist Spagnuolo; Carmelite administrator and humanist; b. Mantua, Italy, April 17, 1447; d. there, March 20, 1516. As a youth he studied at Mantua and the University of Padua. He entered the car melites at Ferrara in 1463 and completed his doctorate in theology at the University of Bologna in 1475. Early entrusted with teaching and administration, he was vicar-general of the Congregation of Mantua for six two-year terms from 1483 to 1513, and was prior general of the whole Carmelite order from 1513 until his death. leo xiii declared Baptist blessed in 1885, and his relics are preserved in the cathedral at Mantua. The friar was a zealous advocate of reform, and his Fastorum libri duodecim, dedicated to leo x, mentions the doom threatening the Church. Some of the Mantuan's strictures were so strong that luther simply borrowed them. A poet of Christian humanism, he enjoyed the reputation of "the Christian Vergil" even in his lifetime. He corresponded with and counseled other humanists; Pico della Mirandola was his friend, and erasmus admired him, as did John colet. His writings, all in Latin, had a phenomenal vogue in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; 179 incunabula have been catalogued, and there are more than 550 editions of his works printed after 1500. His poems include the famous Eclogues, written when he was 15 years old but later revised, and Parthenice Mariana, testimony to his

tender devotion to the Blessed Virgin. His prose works include De vita beata, a Ciceronian dialogue with his father, first printed in 1474, and De patientia.

Feast: March 20.

Bibliography: Opera omnia, 4 v. (Antwerp 1576); The Eclogues of Baptista Mantuanus, ed. w. p. mustard (Baltimore 1911). e. coccia, Le edizione delle opere del Mantovano (Rome 1960). l. m. saggi, La congregazione mantovana dei Carmelitani (Rome 1954) 116–152. e. meuthen, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. j. hofer and k. rahner (Freiburg 1957–65) 1:1228. p.a. de saint-paul, Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, ed. a. baudrillart et al. (Paris 1912) 5:525–527.

[e. r. carroll]