Fassini, Vincenzo Maria

FASSINI, VINCENZO MARIA. - Dominican theologian and historian, b. at Racconigi on 19 Aug. 1738, d. on 15 July 1787 at Pisa, at whose University he held the chair of Sacred Scripture.

An anti-Probabilist and anti-Molinist, for having written a volume on Concina, De vita et studii P. D. Concinae O. P. (Venice 1762), which brought him under suspicion of Jansenism, he merited from Leopold the Pisan chair. He also wrote works of a theological-historical character with erudition, such as: De singularibus Eucharistiae usibus apud veteres Graecas (Brescia 1760); De privorum Christianorum sinaxibus extra aedes sacras (Venice 1770); besides works on Sacred Scripture such as: De apostolica origine evangelorum Ecclesiae catholicae (Livorno 1775); Divini libri Apocalypseus auctoritatis vindiciae (Lucca 1778). He also composed dissertations in addition to Natale Alessandro's Storia ecclesiastica: Ad Not. Alexandri hist. eccles. supplementum, duas in partes distrib. (Bassano 1778), in which he distinguished the two powers, sacred and civil, without however satisfying the editors of the Annali ecclesiastici of Florence, who spoke of this book while composing his obituary (27 July). Although he was in epistolary correspondence with Baldovinetti and with De Ricci and other Jansenists, one cannot assert that he was decisively one of them. It is known, indeed, that he had hindered Baldovinetti's plan of ecclesiastical reform at Livorno.