FORNACIARI, Luigi. – Magistrate and philologist, born in Lucca on 17 Dec. 1798, died there on 23 Nov. 1858. President of the Criminal Court, State Councillor, Royal Advocate with the guardianship of orphans and the poor in the Duchy of Lucca, and Procurator-General in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, he carried out his various offices with integrity.
As a professor of rhetoric, he adopted a method that seemed boldly innovative, as evidenced by his Esempi di bello scrittore (Lucca 1835). A convinced Catholic, he drew near to liberal ideas and collaborated with the Pragmalogia cattolica (a Lucchese apologetic journal that ran from 1828 to 1851) when this periodical became less reactionary in politics and Rosminian in philosophy. His writings are, for the most part, entrusted to the Atti della R. Accademia Lucchese, though separate are the Discorsi filologici (Naples 1858), the Prose (Florence 1874), and the Epistolario (ibid. 1899), incomplete. Documents of his humanitarian disposition are the discourses Della povertà in Lucca, from which an outline of a welfare system might be drawn.
Mansueto Lombardi-Louti