BETTINELLI, SAVERIO. – Jesuit and man of letters, born in Mantova on 18 July 1718, died there on 13 September 1808. He entered the Society in 1736 and taught literature in the colleges of Venice, Parma, and Verona; he made several journeys, on one of which he visited Voltaire on behalf of the Polish court of Nancy; when the Society was suppressed in 1773, he moved to Mantova, although he took refuge in Verona during the French occupation of 1796.
He wrote poems, dramas, and dissertations, some of considerable merit; but his name remains sadly linked to the ten Lettere di Virgilio ai legislatori della nuova Arcadia (Venice 1757), in which, while aiming to dissuade writers from the slavish imitation of classical authors, he falls into the opposite extreme, confusing the imitators with the authors whom they imitate, disparaging and condemning the latter without mercy—Dante especially, whom he accuses of being «arido nell'invenzione, maligno di proposito e indotto nello scrivere». He considers only a thousand verses good; the others are worth nothing (cf. Lettere 1–3). Naturally, these rash and caustic judgments provoked a strong and at times even exaggerated reaction, beginning with C. Gozzi and continuing almost to our own day; and their effects were suffered not only by the author, but also by the Jesuits, who were accused, among other things, of opposition to Dante. It is true that, in criticizing Dante, B. merely gives a more impassioned and insolent form to ideas common among many of his contemporaries (cf. Federico, op. cit., pp. 122–50), and that B. himself calls the Lettere virgiliane «un capriccio, una pazzia, uno scherzo fatto per impegno» (cf. Marchesan, op. cit., p. 182); nevertheless, the work remains a deplorable error, essentially perpetuated also in the later Lettere inglesi (Venice 1766) and in the Dissertazione accademica sopra Dante (Alfieri, op. cit., pp. 257–96). This has caused the lasting literary and patriotic value of other works by B. to be forgotten, such as: Il Risorgimento d'Italia negli studi, nelle arti e nei costumi dopo il Mille (2 vols., Venice 1775) and Discorsi delle lettere e delle arti mantovane (Mantova 1774).