Daniello Bartoli

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Daniello Bartoli (1608 – 1685), Italian Jesuit writer and historian, was born in Ferrara and entered the Society of Jesus in 1623.^[1]

Debarred by his superiors because of his manifest literary talents from the missions in the Indies he would later describe, he attained high distinction as a teacher of rhetoric and a preacher in Genoa, Florence and Rome.

Bartoli's celebrated first work, L'huomo di lettere difeso ed emendato (1645), a literary vademecum for its time, became a Baroque best seller in Italian and in numerous translations, over thirty editions appearing during his lifetime. As a Jesuit historian Bartoli represents the shift from the preceding Latin humanist historiography of Niccolò Orlandini and Francesco Sacchini to the illustrious Jesuit prose tradition he established in Italian when he undertook the official history of the first century of the Society of Jesus (1540). His monumental Istoria della Compagnia di Gesu (Rome, 1650-1673), in 6 folio vols. is the longest Italian classic. It begins with a somewhat ponderous biography of the founder Ignatius Loyola. Particularly fascinating and exotic are his histories of Francis Xavier and the Jesuit missions in the East which describe India, L'Asia (1653), Japan, Il Giappone (1660), and China, La Cina (1663). To these he added volumes on the Society in England, L"Inghiterra (1670) and Italy, L'Italia (1673). Later in life he wrote a number of interesting scientific treatises, in addition to a catalogue of Jesuit lives and moral and spiritual works brought together in a folio edition of 1684, Le Morali. From 1670 to 1673 Bartoli served as Rector of the Collegio Romano. He died in Rome.

During the age of Leopardi and Manzoni Bartoli became the literary paragon of Restoration Italy as a master of prose style. Outstanding among the numerous editions of his works from that period there is the standard collected edition of his works, in 12 vols, published by Giacinto Marietti, Turin, 1825-1856.