FONTANINI, GIUSTO. - Scholar, b. at S. Daniele del Friuli in 1666, d. at Rome on 17 April 1736. In 1697 he received from Clement XI the chair of eloquence at Rome. Benedict XIII made him archbishop of Ancyra. In the dispute between the Holy See and the Este for Comacchio (1708-14) he defended the rights of the Pope, casting doubt on the antiquity and nobility of the house of Este and attacking, in a polemic of excessive violence, L. A. Muratori. He subsequently upheld the rights of the Church over the duchy of Parma and Piacenza.

A scholar of antiquity, he wrote De antiquitatibus Hortae coloniae Etruscorum (1708). But his principal work was a reasoned bibliography of Italian literature: Dell'eloquenza italiana, of which he brought out a sketch in 1706 and the complete edition in 1726. The gaps and the many errors of the work were corrected by Apostolo Zeno in the annotations to the new edition, which, under the title Biblioteca dell'eloquenza italiana, was published in 1753.

Bibliography3 works

BIBL.: D. Fantanini, Memorie della vita di mons. G. F., Venezia 1755; C. Coomi, Note autobiografiche di G. F., in Pagana friulana, 16 (1604), p. 103-102; C. G. Mor, G. F., in Memorie storiche faraginites, 32 (1926), pp. 83-100.

Roberto Palmarocchi

@incollection{ec5_fontanini_giusto, author = {Palmarocchi, Roberto}, title = {Fontanini, giusto}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {V}, pages = {1495--1496}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1950}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/fontanini-giusto} }

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Fontanini, Giusto

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