Bonghi, Ruggero

BONGHI, RUGGERO. - Writer, critic, politician, b. in Naples on 21 March 1826, d. at Torre del Greco on 22 Oct. 1895. A vivid and versatile intellect, he remained until the age of fifteen in a school of the Piarists, then devoted himself to literary and philosophical studies; at twenty he published a translation of Plato's Philebus and sent it to Manzoni and Rosmini, who thought highly of it. At the same time, with the accession of Pius IX, he collaborated with Troya on the Tempo, following moderate liberal lines. As secretary of the legation that pleaded the cause of the Italian league and diet, he was in Rome, Florence and Turin. The crisis of Pius IX's policy led him to go to Florence and then to Turin, to the house of the Arconati; from there, having gone to Stresa, he met Rosmini, who gave him protection and friendship. So great was B.'s veneration for Rosmini that in 1852 he went to live at Stresa, staying near him and attending his death. From the Rosminian conversations, and from those with Manzoni, Pestalozzi and Cavour, B. drew the dialogues he entitled Le strestiane (1854). He had already published the Lettere sul concetto dell'anima (1852) and begun the translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics, but he did not persevere in philosophical studies, distracted by the mobility of his intellect and by political activity, which took complete hold of him from 1860, when he returned to Naples and founded there the Nazionale, unitarian and monarchical. From then on he was a deputy until 1892, and held university chairs in Florence, Milan and Rome, professing Latin literature and ancient and modern history. From '66 a political editor and contributor to the Nuova Antologia, he founded in 1880 the journal Coltura. His capacity for work, the promptness of his intuition and the ease of his eloquence make him the most brilliant Italian polygraph of the century; he succeeds less in works of long breath (e.g. the Storia di Roma, Turin 1883) than in essays, monographs, lectures and chronicles. His early religious education was reinforced by a deep devotion to Manzoni and Rosmini; but his liberalism, excited by his critical temperament, and the polemical circumstances that set him against the policy of the Holy See with regard to Italy, often drove him beyond the bounds of prudence and orthodoxy. His intemperances created difficult situations for him. As rapporteur of the law of the Guarentigie (1871), he displayed the rich talents of his intellect, more political than juridical: the law, which answers neither to the absolute principles of liberalism nor to those of jurisdictionalism, must in fact be considered in relation to the reformist ideas of the Rosminian booklet on the Cinque piaghe, and as a temporary means of arriving at a reconciliation between Church and State. As a deputy of the Right and minister of Education (1874-76) he was opposed both to the anticlericals and the Freemasons and to the Catholics whom he regarded as tied to «temporalismo». He fought freedom of teaching; he was first a supporter and then an opponent of the abolition of the theological faculties in the state universities; he illegally ordered (1876) the closure of the Pontifical University of Rome. In his relations with the Church, the most deplorable episode was the publication of the Vita di Gesù (1892), which he had written with good popularizing intentions, but which turned out 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, lamenting the condemnation, he professes himself a Catholic and reaffirms the idea that Church and State must converge in the struggle against subversivism and materialism, which he sees as threatening. For this he applauded the 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 Dialogues, 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 on S. Francesco (1884) marks interesting anticipations in Franciscan studies. The Sentenze (1866), dictated to the pupils of the institute of Anagni, vigorously summarize the principles of Christian and patriotic pedagogy. He founded that Institute for the orphans of teachers, and another at Assisi for orphans. For the benefit of these colleges he put his library up for sale in his last years. Leo XIII, receiving the pilgrims of 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 may sum up the inner life of a most noble spirit which, even through oscillations and deviations, remained faithful to the highest aspirations of the Christian conscience.

Principal works (besides 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, diary (Florence 1927). The publisher Le Monnier of Florence began in 1935 the publication of the Opere complete di R. B., among which we note: Ritratti e studi di vita religiosa (1 vol., edited by P. Torraca) and Stato e Chiesa (2 vols., edited by W. Maturi).

Egibberto Martire