Giovanni Giovenale Ancina (19 October 1545 – 30 August 1604) was an Italian Roman Catholic prelate who served as the Bishop of Saluzzo and was a professed member from the Oratorians.
Giovanni Giovenale Ancina was born at dawn on 19 October 1545 in Fossano as the first of four children to the successful businessman Durando Ancina (of Spanish roots) and Lucia degli Araudini; he was in fear of death so his parents turned to Saint Juvenal to restore his health which happened so the saint's name became his middle name.
[4] The two brothers made a little chapel in their home and spent their spare time singing psalms and litanies before images of the Madonna and the saints since both were pious children.
[3] In Mondovì he studied subjects such as mathematics and rhetoric and published the "Academia Subalpina" while there; he had not finished his course there when news reached him his father would soon die so he rushed to aid him in his final hours.
After his father died he attended a Padua college where he wrote the Latin poem "The Naval Battle of the Christian Princes" in 1566 and dedicated this to the Doge of Venice Girolamo Priuli.
His talents and interests coupled with his various connections led him to a wide range of career options which included a stint as a professor of medicine at the Turin college.
Ancina had known he would not soon return to Turin so sent part of his works to the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin at Fossano and asked the remainder be given to a bookseller to sell on his behalf.
It was there in Naples that Ancina published the "Tempio Armonico della Beatissima Vergine" which was a collection of spiritual songs set to a range of voices.
[2] Around 1596 he became concerned when the episcopal sees of Nice and Vercelli became vacant for he heard a whisper that the Duke of Savoy wanted to nominate him to the pope for one of the positions.
Ancina was reluctant to accept this nomination but in an ironic twist further enhanced his reputation through his notable preaching in the various places (in Loreto and Cingoli as well as Fermo amongst others) which he visited over the period of five months while perpetrating this evasion.
[1] Cardinal Alessandro de' Medici - the future Pope Leo XI - was delighted of his appointment and had hailed Ancina for his learnedness and his succinct responses to theological questions that were posed to him.
[citation needed] The bishop Francis de Sales had a great admiration for Ancina who was later to establish and join an Oratorian house in his own diocese.
On 20 August the monk gave him wine laced with poison under the guise of reconciliation; the bishop was surprised at the gesture but drank the contents.
[citation needed] The confirmation of Ancina's life of heroic virtue allowed for Pope Pius IX to title him as Venerable on 29 January 1870.
Pope Leo XIII later approved two miracles attributed to Ancina's intercession on 30 May 1889 and beatified the late bishop in Saint Peter's Basilica on 9 February 1890.