BOLGENI, Giovanni Vincenzo. — Eminent Jesuit and distinguished Italian theologian, born at Macerata on 22 January 1733, died at Rome on 3 May 1811. Having entered the religious life in 1747, he taught philosophy and moral theology at Macerata until the suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773. Subsequently, he displayed remarkable literary activity, primarily in the field of theological polemics.
His various works against Jansenism, defending the Holy See, led Pope Pius VI to summon him to Rome, where he continued his tireless labors as theologian of the Sacred Penitentiary (1787).
In his work *Della carità o amor di Dio* (Rome 1788), he endeavored to prove, against the Dominican de Rubeis, that, according to the doctrine of Scripture and 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
solely insofar as He is our supreme good. Attacked by several theologians and even by his own confreres (Regono, Cortes, Muzzarelli, Chantre y Herrera, Gentilini), he stubbornly defended his position without success. When, in 1798, Napoleon took possession of Rome, Bolgeni showed weakness in supporting the liceity of the civic oath of hatred against monarchy imposed by the Roman Republic. Reprimanded by the competent authorities, he continued to defend his error in several pamphlets, and only the condemnation of the oath pronounced by Pius VI induced him to retract. Pius VII, however, removed him from the office of theologian of the Sacred Penitentiary, which was entrusted to Muzzarelli. After his disgrace, Bolgeni continued to write various works, many of which were published posthumously. Worthy of special mention is the posthumous work *Dei limiti delle due potestà ecclesiasticae e civile*, published in Florence in 1849 and placed on the Index on 19 December 1850, which, according to *La Civiltà Cattolica*, 1st series, 2 (1850, II), pp. 451-58, would not be entirely authentic.