B. JOHN MARINONI, C.

HE was the third and youngest son of a noble family, originally of Bergamo, but was born at Venice, in 1490. From his infancy it was his chiefest delight to be on his knees at the foot of the altar, and to hear as many masses every day as his employments permitted him. He usually studied before a crucifix, and sanctified his studies by most frequent fervent acts of divine love. To beg of God the grace never to sully his baptismal innocence, he spent forty days in prayer and a rigorous fast in honor of the immaculate conception of the mother of God. Having embraced an ecclesiastical state, he served among the clergy of St. Pantaleon’s church: and when he was ordained priest, became chaplain and afterwards superior of the hospital of incurables, in which charitable employ he was a comforting angel to all who were under his care. He was called hence to be admitted canon in the celebrated church of St. Mark, where his life was the edification of his colleagues and of the whole city. Out of a desire of serving God in a more perfect disengagement from earthly things, he demanded the habit of the regular clerks called Theatins, and made his profession in 1530, on the 29th of May, being then forty years of age, under the eyes of their founders, St. Cajetan, and Caraffa, ancient bishop of Chieti or Theate, who had instituted this order six years before. St. Cajetan being called from Venice to found the convent of St. Paul at Naples, took with him our saint. In that great city, Marinoni never ceased to preach the word of God with admirable simplicity and zeal; and being chosen several times superior, settled and maintained in it the perfect spirit of his order.

Both by his prayers and sacrifices, in which his eyes were often bathed with tears, and by his exhortations in the pulpit and confessional, he was an instrument of salvation to many just and sinners. He died of a violent cold and fever at Naples, on the 13th of December, 1562. He was beatified by a bull of Clement XIII. in 1762, who, in 1764, granted to his order an office in his honor to be celebrated on the 13th of December. See St. Andrew Avellino’s letter on his heroic virtues, written in 1600; his short life written by Castaldi, sixty years after his death, printed at Vicenza in 1627: also the annals of the order, by Tuffo, bishop of Acerra; those by Silos, t. 1; the life of this saint by F. Bonaglia, printed at Rome in 1762; that by F. Blanchi, at Venice, in quarto; and that compiled in French by F. Tracy, Theatin at Paris, yet in MS.