FONTANINI, Giusto. — Man of letters, born at S. Daniele del Friuli in 1666, died at Rome on 17 April 1736. In 1697 he was given by Clement XI the chair of rhetoric and poetry at Rome. Benedict XIII made him archbishop of Ancyra. In the dispute between the Holy See and the Este family over Comacchio (1708–14), he defended the Pope’s claims, casting doubt on the antiquity and nobility of the House of Este and attacking, in a polemic of excessive violence, L. A. Muratori. Later he upheld the Church’s rights to the duchy of Parma and Piacenza.
A scholar of antiquity, he wrote *De antiquitatibus Hortae coloniae Etruscorum* (1708). His chief work, however, was a reasoned bibliography of Italian literature: *Dell’elogium italiano*, of which he issued a draft in 1706 and the complete edition in 1726. The gaps and many errors in the work were corrected by Apostolo Zeno in the notes to the new edition, published in 1753 under the title *Biblioteca dell’elogium italiano*.