Daniello Bartoli - Vocation and Studies

Vocation and Studies

Daniello was the youngest of three sons and barely fifteen when embraced a vocation to the Society of Jesus in 1623. Debarred by his superiors because of his manifest literary talents from the missions in the Indies he would later describe, he attained high distinction in science and letters. Under Jesuit scientists Giovanni Battista Riccioli and Niccolo Zucchi the young Bartoli, together with his younger contemporary Francesco Maria Grimaldi was involved in noteworthy experiments and discoveries of the planetary heavens. Bartoli along with Zucchi is credited as having been one of the first to see the equatorial belts on the planet Jupiter on May 17, 1630. And in his old age he would return to the world of science. As his education progressed he became a Jesuit scholastic and was highly regarded as a teacher of rhetoric. In his thirties he was an esteemed preacher delivering the Lenten sermons at the principal Jesuits churches of Italy including Genoa, Florence and Rome. A shipwreck off Capri in 1643, where he lost his manuscripts, put an end to his pilgrim years and brought him to permanently to the Jesuit headquarters in Rome with his appointment as Jesuit historiographer.