BORGO, CARLO. - Man of letters and polemicist, born in Vicenza on 26 July 1731, died in Parma in 1794.
Having entered the Society of Jesus in 1746, he taught literature in various colleges and theology at Modena. When the Society of Jesus was suppressed by Clement XIV, he devoted himself to the study of the sciences and to literary composition.
His Updated Analysis and Examination of the Defence and Fortification of Strongholds (Venice, 1775) earned him from Frederick II, to whom it was dedicated, a patent as honorary lieutenant-colonel of engineers. The anonymous Catholic Memorandum to Be Presented to His Holiness, a posthumous work (sic!, Cosmopoli, 1780), a vigorous defence of the suppressed Society, was placed on the Index on 3 June 1781 and its printers were arrested; an enlarged second edition was included by Fr Francesco Rica in the Interesting Anecdotes of History and Criticism concerning the Catholic Memorandum (1782). A Second Catholic Memorandum (3 vols., 1783–84), condemned in 1786, is not by B., but perhaps by the Sardinian Jesuit Bonifazio Dolmi. The oration in praise of St Ignatius delivered by B. at Reggio Emilia in 1781 had a great many reprints and translations. The Novena in Preparation for the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (Florence, 1786) was translated into eight languages and reproduced in innumerable editions. Finally, noteworthy was his intervention in the controversy against the synod of Pistoia with the First and Second Letter to a Roman Prelate (Hala [but Assisi], 1789–90).