BOVINO – Cathedral (11th–12th centuries).
philosophy of history, in which he set himself up as an emulator of G. Ferrari. He loved the paradoxical and the sententious style; but his theses were not without allure, owing to the vigor of a certain dialectic of his, by which he knew how to animate ideas, chisel them with the imagination, and set them dramatically against one another.
Extraordinary was the enthusiasm aroused among the youth of the University of Naples, where he delivered his lectures. Naturally, political motives that were then triumphant were also involved. At that time, in Italy, he embodied the typical figure of the “freethinker,” who was not without a certain air of priestly, indeed pontifical, solemnity. Positivism, meanwhile, had spread rapidly, and B. increasingly bent his earlier rationalism toward a naturalism that he defined as “mathematical”; according to which “matter, proportioning and relating itself, becomes nature; nature, reflecting itself, becomes thought; and thought, moving itself, becomes history”; vedi lo Schema di un naturalismo matematico (1877) e Il naturalismo (postumo, Napoli 1903). Elected to Parliament (in 1876), he was among the leading exponents of the republican party, and reaped numerous laurels with his Discorsi (ivi 1900, e Roma, a cura della Camera dei Deputati, 1915), which were, moreover, more literary than properly political. His republicanism, unlike that of Mazzini, had a rather anarchic orientation: for at its center was the freedom of the individual, while the State was a transitory necessity in the historical development of humanity: vedi Scritti filosofici e politici (ivi 1883); e la Dottrina dei partiti in Europa (ivi 1886). The anticlerical note (never, however, vulgar) recurs frequently, and at times crosses over into expressions approaching atheism. But, in the end, it was a superficial irreligiousness, as is also attested by the blamelessness of his conduct and his very modest life.
He had, perhaps, the soul of an artist more than that of a thinker. From his youth he composed verse. Among his numerous inscriptions, some remain as models of this literary genre. His greatest fame, however, in the literary field, was achieved in several dramas, especially with Cristo alla festa di Purim (Opere drammatiche, Milano 1908). But perhaps superior to the other dramas are the Attic scenes of Socrate (Torino-Roma 1902), in which one senses the desire for closeness to that great moral figure.