BONGHI, RUGGERO. – Writer, critic, and politician, born in Naples on 21 March 1826, died at Torre del Greco on 22 October 1895. A lively and versatile intellect, he remained until the age of fifteen in a Piarist boarding school; he then devoted himself to literary and philosophical studies. At the age of twenty he published a translation of Plato’s Philebus and sent it to Manzoni and Rosmini, who greatly appreciated II. At the same time, upon the accession of Pius IX, he collaborated with Troya on Tempo, following moderate liberal guidelines. As secretary of the legation that advocated the cause of the Italian league and diet, he was in Rome, Florence, and Turin. The crisis in Pius IX’s policy induced him to go to Florence and then to Turin, to the Arconati household; from there, having gone to Stresa, he met Rosmini, who offered him protection and friendship. So great was B.’s veneration for Rosmini that in 1852 he went to live in Stresa, remaining close to him and attending him at his death. From his Rosminian conversations, and from those with Manzoni, Pestalozzi, and Cavour, B. drew the dialogues he entitled Le strestiane (1854). He had already published Lettere sul concetto dell’anima (1852) and begun translating Aristotle’s Metaphysics, but he did not persevere in philosophical studies, distracted by the mobility of his intellect and by political activity, which wholly absorbed him from 1860, when he returned to Naples and founded Nazionale there, a unitarian and monarchist paper. From then on he was a deputy until 1892, and held university chairs in Florence, Milan, and Rome, teaching Latin literature and ancient and modern history. From 1866 he was political editor and contributor to Nuova Antologia, and in 1880 he founded the journal Coltura. His capacity for work, promptness of intuition, and facility in eloquence make him the most gifted Italian polymath of the century; he was less successful in works requiring sustained effort (for example, Storia di Roma, Turin 1883) than in essays, monographs, lectures, and chronicles. His initial religious education was strengthened by profound devotion to Manzoni and Rosmini; but his liberalism, stimulated by his critical temperament, and the polemical circumstances that placed him in opposition to the policy of the Holy See with regard to Italy, often drove him beyond the bounds of prudence and orthodoxy. His intemperance created difficult situations for him. As rapporteur on the Guarentigie law (1871), he displayed the rich talents of his intellect, which were more political than juridical: the law, which in fact corresponds neither to the absolute principles of liberalism nor to those of jurisdictionalism, must be considered in relation to the reformist ideas of the Rosminian booklet on the Cinque piaghe, and as a temporary means of reaching a conciliation between Church and State. As a deputy of the Right and Minister of Education (1874–76), he was opposed both to anticlericals and Freemasons and to Catholics whom he considered attached to «temporalism». He opposed freedom of education; he was first an advocate and then an opponent of the abolition of theological faculties in state universities; in 1876 he illegally ordered the closure of the Pontifical University of Rome. In his relations with the Church, the most deplorable episode was the publication of Vita di Gesù (1892), which he had written with good popularizing intentions but which proved to be full of very serious errors and was therefore placed on the Index (decree of 16 March 1892). On that occasion he wrote a Lettera a Leone XIII (1893), in which, expressing his regret at the condemnation, he professed himself a Catholic and reaffirmed the view that Church and State ought to converge in the struggle against subversion and materialism, which he saw as threatening. For this he applauded Rerum novarum. He opposed the apotheosis of G. Bruno in Rome, defying the anticlerical students. In the letters prefixed to his much-discussed translation of Plato’s Dialoghi, as well as in countless publications, there are vigorous pages on God, immortality, evangelical morality, Christian peace, the indissolubility of marriage, and the splendor of charity. A study of S. Francesco (1884) marks interesting anticipations in Franciscan studies. The Sentenze (1866), dictated to the female pupils of the Anagni institute, vigorously summarize the principles of Christian and patriotic pedagogy. He founded this institute for the orphaned daughters of teachers, and another at Assisi for orphans. For the benefit of these institutions, in his final years he put his library up for sale. Leo XIII, receiving pilgrims from Torre del Greco a few days after his death, said to them: « Pray for the great soul of R. B. » A generous and paternal judgment that can sum up the intimacy of a most noble spirit who, despite oscillations and deviations, remained faithful to the highest aspirations of the Christian conscience.
Principal works (in addition to those cited): Perché la letteratura italiana non sia popolare (Milan 1856); Frati, Papi e re (Naples 1873); Pio IX e il Papa futuro (Milan 1877); Leone XIII e l’Italia (ibid. 1878); Opere inedite e rare di Manzoni (ibid. 1885–98); Arnoldo da Brescia (Città di Castello 1885); Roma pagana, Roma cristiana (Florence 1886); Discorsi alla « Dante Alighieri » (S. Maria Capua Vetere 1920); Scritti manzoniani (Naples 1927); I miei fatti e i miei pensieri, diario (Florence 1927). The publisher Le Monnier of Florence began publishing the Opere complete di R. B. in 1935, among which we mention: Ritratti e studi di vita religiosa (1 vol., edited by P. Torraca) and Stato e Chiesa (2 vols., edited by W. Maturi).