Aloysius, Saint, of Gonzaga

ALOYSIUS, al´´ɵi´´shius´, SAINT, OF GONZAGA (LUIGI GONZAGA): Jesuit; b. in the castle of Castiglione (22 m. n.w. of Mantua), the ancestral seat of the Gonzaga family, Mar. 9, 1568; d. in Rome June 21, 1591. His father was Marquis of Castiglione and a prince of the Holy Roman Empire, but the boy turned away from the pleasures of courts and devoted himself early to a life of asceticism and piety. In 1585 he renounced his claim to the succession in order to join the Society of Jesus, and took the vows in 1587. His death was due to his self-sacrificing labors in the care of the sick during the prevalence of the plague in Rome. He was beatified by Gregory XV. in 1621, and canonized by Benedict XIII. in 1726. Devotion to him is wide-spread in the modern Roman Catholic Church, in which he is regarded as a model of the virtue of purity, and an especial patron of young men, particularly those who enter the ecclesiastical state.

Bibliography: V. Cepari, De vita beati Aloysii Gonzagæ, Cologne, 1608, Eng. transl. by F. Goldie, London, 1891; C. Papencordt, Der heilige Aloysius, Paderborn, 1889.