the duke Sforza Cesarini, who enjoyed the privilege of creating knights palatine and knights of the order of the Golden Spur. In 1830 he obtained an introduction to Rosmini, which led to his joining the Institute of Charity founded by that celebrated philosopher. Having been ordained priest in 1830, he was sent in 1831 to the first house of the institute, built on Monte Calvario, near Domo d'Ossola, and was appointed master of the novices. In 1835 the Institute of Charity was introduced into England, and Gentili and two other missionaries were sent by the Father-general Rosmini, and exercised their ministry first at Trelawney, Cornwall, and afterwards at Prior Park, near Bath, where Gentili was appointed superior of the college by Bishop Baines. Differences arose on educational and other subjects between the bishop and Gentili, who, after visiting Rome in 1839 to take his vows as presbyter of the institute, was sent back by his superior in 1840 to become chaplain to Ambrose Lisle Phillipps [see De Lisle] of Grace Dieu Manor, Leicestershire. In 1842 he was removed to the mission at Loughborough, and after a time his talents and successes as a preacher led to his being appointed itinerant missionary. He commenced this new career in company with Father Furlong in 1845. After giving missions in all the large towns of England and Ireland, Gentili, while on a visit to the latter country, was seized with a feverish attack, and died at Dublin on 25 Sept. 1848. A detailed account of his missionary labours will be found in the ‘Life of the Rev. Aloysius Gentili, LL.D., Father of Charity and Missionary Apostolic in England. Edited by the Very Rev. Father Pagani,’ London, 1851, 8vo (with portrait).
[Pagani's Life of Gentili; Collins's Life of Gentili, 1861; Dublin Review, xxxi. 365; Lockhart's Life of Rosmini.]
GENTILI, ROBERT (1590–1654?), infant prodigy, scapegrace, and translator, eldest son of Alberico Gentili [q. v.], was born in London 11 Sept. 1590, and was named after his godfather the Earl of Essex. He was educated in accordance with a theory that the youthful mind is better developed by conversation than by set study. Having always talked with his father in Latin, and with his mother in French, he could speak both languages, besides English, when seven years old. A few months afterwards he had been taken by the same method through the Eclogues of Virgil. In 1599, at the age of nine, he was matriculated at Christ Church, and in 1603 took the degree of B.A. as a member of Jesus College. In the following year he was at St. John's, and on the nomination of Laud, then proctor, held the now obsolete university office of ‘collector,’ but was unfortunately dissuaded from publishing an account of his experiences in that capacity. One of the plans of Alberico for pushing the boy's fortunes was to allow him to dedicate in his own name several of his father's works to persons of influence. The illegal intrusion of Robert into a fellowship was less defensible. Alberico, finding that the boy was not making progress in his classical studies, set to work to procure his election to a law vacancy which had occurred at All Souls. For more than two years the college resisted alike letters from King James and representations from Archbishop Bancroft as to Robert's ‘extraordinary forwardness,’ on the ground that he had not reached the statutable age. Alberico wrote a learned argument to show that to enter upon one's seventeenth year was equivalent to completing it (Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 12504), and, the appointment having lapsed to Bancroft as visitor, Robert was, on his nomination, admitted early in 1607 to be a probationer-fellow. His conduct was such as bitterly to disappoint the expectations of his parents, as appears from expressions in the wills of both, and in letters from his uncle Scipio, to whom he paid a visit at Altdorf in 1609. He was nicknamed at Oxford ‘the king of the beggars,’ and the archbishop was once obliged to summon him to Lambeth to answer for misbehaviour in college. In 1612 he took the degree of B.C.L., but in the same year resigned his fellowship, and disappears from view for a quarter of a century. He seems to have received some assistance from the king. A small annuity left to him by his mother, on condition that he should ‘change no religion and come not to this country,’ was revoked on his return to England in 1637, although he was then, according to some accounts, ‘multum reformatus.’ ‘Alice, wife of Robert Gentilis,’ had been buried in 1619 at St. Bride's, Fleet Street, but he married on 4 Jan. 1638, as a ‘bachelor,’ at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, Mary, widow of Richard Simpson, and set to work to execute the following translations, all for Humphrey Mosely, of St. Paul's Churchyard, after the date of the last of which he is no more traceable: 1. ‘The History of the Inquisition, composed by the Rev. Father Paul Servita,’ London, 1639, 4to (reprinted in Sir Nathaniel Brent's ‘Translation of the History of the Council of Trent,’ folio, 1620, 1676). 2. ‘The Antipathy between the French and the Spaniard,’ otherwise entitled ‘The Frenchman and the Spaniard, or the Two Great Lights of the World,’ &c., London, 1641, 1642, 12mo (dedicated by
