FROM DUKE TO FRIAR
PEPE, Stefano.
[Half-title: ‘Il Cappuccino d’Este del Padre Pepe’] ‘Historia Della Vita, e della Morte, et Attioni illustri Del P[ad]re Gio[vanni] Battista d’Este, Cappuccino. Fù nel secolo Alfonso III d’Este, Duca di Modena. Composta dal Molto Reu[erendo] Padre Don Stefano Pepe Chierico Regolare Teatino. Napolitano. divisa in tre libri, dove è inserta anche la Vita dell’Infanta Isabella di Savoia, Principessa di Modena’.
[Italy, second half of the seventeenth century.]
Manuscript on paper, in Italian, 8vo (207 x 146 mm), ff. [1 (blank)], [xi], 176, [3 (blank)]; neatly written in a single cursive hand in brown ink, with some titles, headings, initials, and words in red ink, up to 25 lines per page; very small dampstain to lower margin of a few leaves, otherwise very good; bound in nineteenth-century marbled sheep-backed boards with tree-marbled sides and vellum tips, spine gilt in compartments with gilt red morocco lettering-piece, edges sprinkled red; lightly worn at extremities, short splits to joints.
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[Half-title: ‘Il Cappuccino d’Este del Padre Pepe’] ‘Historia Della Vita, e della Morte, et Attioni illustri Del P[ad]re Gio[vanni] Battista d’Este, Cappuccino. Fù nel secolo Alfonso III d’Este, Duca di Modena. Composta dal Molto Reu[erendo] Padre Don Stefano Pepe Chierico Regolare Teatino. Napolitano. divisa in tre libri, dove è inserta anche la Vita dell’Infanta Isabella di Savoia, Principessa di Modena’.
A seemingly unpublished life of Alfonso III d’Este, Duke of Modena, who renounced his title to become a Capuchin friar.
The Cappuccino d’Este offers a detailed though hagiographic account of the life of Alfonso III d’Este (1591–1644), Duke of Modena and Reggio from 1628 to 1629 and husband of Isabella of Savoy (d. 1626). After a reign of only six months, Alfonso abdicated in favour of his son Francesco and entered the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, where ‘his preaching, humility, and exemplary life as a friar aroused admiration and enthusiasm’ (Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, trans.). He founded monasteries, preached in Austria, and ‘committed to the conversion of the Jews, to sheltering young endangered women in institutes, and assisting prisoners’ (ibid.).
The text is the work of Stefano Pepe, a Neapolitan Theatine and the author of several works, including a published biography of Cajetan of Thiene, the founder of the Theatine order (Vita del b. Gaetano Tiene, Venice, 1662). The manuscript opens with a detailed table of contents (ff. [iii]-[viii]), followed by Pepe’s poem In lode del padre Giovanni Battista d’Este Cappuccino (ff. [ix]-[xi]). The life of Alfonso is divided into three books, the first two describing his youth and education, his relationship with Isabella, and his government until the abdication (ff. 1r–89v) while the third covers the rest of his life as a Capuchin friar, his virtues, and the graces obtained through his intercession (ff. 90r ad finem). Some of the biographical details derived first-hand from the author himself, and in chapter VIII, part III, Pepe recounts meeting Alfonso himself (ff. 131r–140r).
Another manuscript, probably similar, is held at Modena, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria (Estense, It. 30 = alfa.Q.9.25), titled ‘Il duca cappuccino: Vita morte e attioni illustri del p. Gio. Battista d’Este cappuccino predicatore apostolico già Alfonso terzo duca di Modena …’. Another biography of Alfonso, by Pepe’s contemporary the Capuchin friar Giovanni da Sestola, was published under a similar title to the present manuscript: Del Cappuccino d’Este, che fu nel secolo il ser.mo Alfonso III duca di Modana e nella religione serafica il Pre. Gio Battista predicatore apostolico e della ser.ma infanta d. Isabella di Savoia sua dilettissima consorte, nascita, vita, morte e sepoltura (Modena, Bartolomeo Soliani, 1646).
