CORNOLDI, GIOVANNI. - Jesuit, one of the principal restorers of Thomism in Italy, b. in Venice on 29 Sept. 1822, d. in Rome on 18 Jan. 1892.
Disgusted with the philosophical doctrines of his time, including those that had been taught to him at the Roman College, he turned to Aristotelian-Thomist philosophy. In a first work of his he criticized the mechanism of Fr. S. Tongiorgi and the dynamism of Fr. A. Secchi and reasserted the hylomorphic doctrine on the constitution of bodies. Having become in 1876 a writer and then rector of La Civiltà Cattolica, he defended ever more openly, together with Taparelli, the most genuine Thomist doctrines. He was the founder and the soul of the two Thomist academies: the Accademia filosofico-medica di s. Tommaso in Bologna, with its periodical La scienza italiana, 1876-90, later merged with La scuola cattolica of Milan in 1891; the Accademia romana di s. Tommaso d'Aquino, with its periodical of the same name (1881-99), of Rome and of Bologna, and he directed their scientific journals. He showed himself a determined opponent of the philosophical work of Rosmini.
Principal works: Lezioni di filosofia ordinate allo studio di altre scienze, Florence 1872 (translated into French, Spanish, English, Slavic and into Latin under the title: Institutiones philosophicae); Prolegomeni sopra la filosofia italiana e trattato dell'esistenza di Dio, Bologna 1877; Dei principi fisico-razionali secondo s. Tommaso d'Aquino, ibid. 1881; Il rosminianismo sintesi dell'ontologismo e del panteismo, Rome 1881; La Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri col Commento, Rome 1887; Il sistema fisico di s. Tommaso, ibid. 1891.
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Carlo Giacom