CESARI, ANTONIO. - Writer, b. in Verona in 1760. He was a priest of the local Congregation of the Oratory. He devoted himself intensely to sacred studies, but even more to literary ones.
He published various translations: from Greek, two elegies of Callimachus and the Apologeticus of St. Gregory of Nazianzus; from Latin, the Odes and some Satires of Horace, the Comedies of Terence, the first book On Virgins of St. Ambrose, and he collaborated, together with the abbot Giuseppe Furlanetto, on the Appendix ad totius latinitatis Lexicon Egidii Forcellini (Padua 1816). His translation of the Imitation of Christ (Verona 1785) is truly to be placed among the texts of the Italian language (F. Flora). He spent thirty years teaching Italian and Latin, until 1807, ultimately devoting a great part of his labors to the new edition of the Vocabolario della Crusca with the Veronese Giunte. Seeking the canon of the perfect writer, he formulated the principles for a revival of beautiful writing: his doctrine of "purism" is set out in the Dissertazione sullo stato presente della lingua italiana and in the dialogue Le Grazie; and he affirmed that the language of the fourteenth century "suffices to be able to say all things elegantly." Witnesses to his long love for the ancient language are the edition of the Vite dei SS. Padri, of the Vita del b. Colombini, of the Fioretti, and the acute analysis of Dantean language in the Bellezze della Commedia di Dante. With his original writings (Novelle, Rime piacevoli, Rime gravi), C. largely confirmed his theory on the absolute value of the golden fourteenth century. His very notable works of a religious character: Lezioni storico-morali, Vita di Gesù Cristo e la sua religione, Fatti degli Apostoli, Fiore di storia ecclesiastica give us of C. and of his literary activity that idea which Giordani defined in the famous epitaph: "With his writings and with his life he gloriously maintained the faith of Christ and the language of Italy."
His humanistic activity did not prevent C. from attending to the obligations of the religious life; indeed he may be considered the restorer of the Oratory of Verona after the Napoleonic interruption. He died in Ravenna in 1828, and a tomb was erected for him in the church of S. Romualdo di Classe (the abbot Celestino Cavedoni composed the inscription); once the church was closed for worship, the tomb was later transferred to the metropolitan church of the same city.