BOLGENI, GIOVANNI VINCENZO. - Eminent Jesuit and distinguished Italian theologian, b. at Macerata on 22 Jan. 1733, d. at Rome on 3 May 1811. Having entered religious life (1747), he taught philosophy and moral theology at Macerata until the suppression of the Society of Jesus (1773). Thereafter he displayed a prodigious literary activity of a predominantly theological-polemical character.

His various works against Jansenism in defense of the Holy See caused him to be summoned to Rome by Pius VI, where he continued in his tireless industry, as theologian of the Sacred Penitentiary (1787).

In the work Della carità o amor di Dio (Rome 1788), he strives to prove, against the Dominican de Rubeis, that, according to the doctrine of Scripture and of the Fathers, the formal object of the theological virtue of charity is not the love of benevolence, but the love of concupiscence, whereby God is loved, not insofar as He is the supreme good in Himself, but only insofar as He is our supreme good. Attacked by various theologians and by his own confreres (Regono, Cortex, Muzzarelli, Chantre y Herrera, Gentilini), he obstinately persisted in defending his point of view, but without success. When, in 1798, Napoleon seized Rome, B. had the weakness to uphold the lawfulness of the civic oath of hatred of the monarchy, imposed by the Roman Republic. Recalled to duty by the competent authorities, he continued to defend his error in certain pamphlets, and only the condemnation of the oath pronounced by Pius VI induced him to retract. Pius VII nevertheless deprived him of the office of theologian of the Sacred Penitentiary, which was entrusted to Muzzarelli. After his disgrace B. continued to write various works, many of which were published after his death. Worthy of special mention is the posthumous work Dei limiti delle due potestà ecclesiastica e civile, published at Florence in 1849 and placed on the Index on 19 Dec. 1850, which, according to La Civiltà Cattolica, 1st series, 2 (1850, II), pp. 451-58, would not be entirely authentic.

Bibliography6 works

BIBL.: Sommervogel, I, coll. 1611-22; G. Cernitore, Bibliografia polemica degli scrittori che dal 1770 al 1793 hanno o difese o impugnati i dogmi della cattolica romana Chiesa, Rome 1793, pp. 19-24; Hutter, V, 613-31; L. Koch, Jesuiten-Lexikon, coll. 224-25; J. de Guibert, s. v. in DSp, I, coll. 1759-61; E. Valentini, Un inedito del B. sulla grazia, in Salesianum, 2 (1940), pp. 179-203.

Emanuele Chietini

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Bolgeni, Giovanni Vincenzo

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