Boselli, Luigi Antonio

BOSELLI, LUIGI ANTONIO. - Priest, educator, b. in Genoa in 1798, d. there in 1886. He had contact with and came under the influence of the leading Ligurian exponents of Jansenism, the abbots Degola and Descalzi, whence his ideas, openly professed, on the necessity of a profound reform of the Church and his being opposed to the temporal power of the Popes and to the definition of the Pontiff's infallibility. He was also an ardent patriot. But the best years of his life he spent in the care of the deaf-mutes; first as a disciple of Fr. O. Assarotti (v.), then as his collaborator and finally from 1829 as his successor in the direction of the institute for the deaf-mutes of Genoa, to which he gave strong development, encouraged by Cardinals Lambruschini and Tadini and commended by Gregory XVI himself (letter of 9 May 1835).

To be remembered among his writings: Sui sordomuti, sulla loro istruzione ed il loro numero (Genoa 1834); Osservazioni sull'insegnamento della grammatica del p. Assarotti (in Educatore primario, 3 [1847], pp. 32 ff., 481 ff., 609 ff.); Considerazioni religiose e civili intorno all'educazione dei sordomuti (Naples 1856); Appello alla nazione e ai poteri dello Stato a favore dei sordomuti (Genoa 1863).

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