Albertini, Giorgio-Francesco

ALBERTINI, GIORGIO-FRANCESCO. - Dominican theologian and preacher, b. 20 February 1732 at Parenzo, where he d. 29 April 1810. In 1745 he took the religious habit at Venice and completed his studies there. He preached with incisive and solid eloquence in many cities of Italy. He taught theology at Venice, at the College of Propaganda (1789) in Rome, where he had been since 1787, called there by Pius VI, at Padua (1791), sent there by the Reformers of that Studio to succeed Fr. Antonio Valsecchi, where (1708-91) he remained with honor until the suppression of that faculty (1807). He refused three chairs of philosophy, offered to him by the new authorities of the Kingdom of Italy, declined to be part of the College of Doctors instituted by them, and to go to the electoral assemblies of Bologna, in order to protest against the persecution of the Church and of the Pope. He published various apologetic works, clear and moderate. In his theological lectures (Acroases, 5 vols., Padua-Venice 1798-1802, to which he added a VI volume of Scholia, Venice 1808) he was inspired by a broad concordism, drawing to himself the sympathies of the non-Thomists and the attacks of the Thomists. Fr. Domenico Pellegrini (1737-1820) criticized him in his In Acroases p. G. A. animadversionum theologicarum specimen (Verona 1803), to which the A. replied. Two ingenious works also remain from him, in which he attempts to determine the chronology of the world from the creation.

Timoteo Centi