GUBERNATIS, DOMENICO DE

Franciscan historian; b. Sospitello, Diocese of Turin, date unknown; d. Turin, 1690. Little is known about the life of Gubernatis. His fame as a historian rests on his authorship of the monumental work whose six-line title is usually shortened to Orbis Seraphicus. Gubernatis was commissioned to undertake this work about 1670 by the minister general of the Franciscans. As conceived by Gubernatis, it was to be a universal history of the Franciscan Order in 30 volumes. Only seven ever appeared, but the work remains a singular specimen of 17th-century historiography. It is probably the most valuable history of the order, with the single exception of Wadding's Annales. The first four volumes, published by Gubernatis himself at Rome and Lyons between 1682 and 1685, concern the internal history of the order. He also published one volume on the missionary history at Rome in 1689. Gubernatis's plan was continued by Sigismundo Cavalli da Cueno, who produced a volume on the history of the provinces at Turin (1741), and by Marcellino da Civezza and Theophil Domenichelli, who authored a second volume of missionary history that was published at Quaracchi in 1886.

Bibliography: a. chiappini, "Orbis Seraphicus: A Bibliographical Note," The Americas 8 (1951–52) 77–81. marcellino da civezza, Saggio de bibliografia geografica storica ethnografica sanfrancescana (Prato 1879) 181. j. h. sbaralea, Supplementum et castigatio ad scriptores trium ordinum S. Francisci a Waddingo, 4:217.

[c. j. lynch]