Anthony Baldinucci

Anthony Baldinucci was born in Florence in 1665, a son of Filippo Baldinucci, the Florentine art historian, biographer of artists, and man of letters. He entered the Society of Jesus as a novice in Rome in 1681, while still in his mid-teens. After completing the Society’s course of studies in the humanities, philosophy, and theology, he was ordained a priest. From early in his Jesuit life he asked to be sent to the overseas missions, especially in the East Indies, but his superiors judged his health too fragile for that assignment and kept him in Italy.

From the closing years of the seventeenth century until 1717 he was occupied with popular missions in the Papal States. He preached in numerous towns and villages of central Italy, especially in Lazio, Umbria, and the Marche, traveling on foot from place to place. His missions stressed conversion of life, frequent reception of the sacraments, and devotion to the Passion of Christ. He was known for penitential processions in which he carried a large wooden cross, for personal austerity including fasting and other mortifications, and for drawing large crowds among rural and small-town populations. Contemporary Jesuit accounts describe him as conducting several hundred such missions over roughly two decades.

Baldinucci’s health remained weak throughout this itinerant ministry. He died at Pofi, in the southern part of the Papal States (today in the province of Frosinone), on 6 November 1717. A popular cult formed after his death. Pope Leo XIII beatified him on 23 April 1893. The Catholic Church keeps his feast on 6 November. He has not been canonized. His life belongs to the Jesuit parish-mission movement of early modern Italy, which sought the reform of morals and the revival of religious practice among ordinary people in the countryside and small towns of the Papal States.