 At twenty-two, Ascanio Caracciolo was a young man enjoying the exceedingly comfortable life available to an Italian nobleman of the sixteenth century, when he contracted a terrible skin disease.Facing death, he vowed that if he recovered he would give the rest of his life to God, and after his miraculous recovery he immediately began studying for the priesthood and was ordained in 1587 at the age of twenty-five.Ascanio's first work was in Naples, with a confraternity that looked after the spiritual welfare of prisoners and those condemned to death.