FORNARI, Vito. — Philosopher and man of letters, born at Molfetta on 10 March 1821, died at Naples on 6 March 1900. A solitary and contemplative spirit, his life presents few notable events. After varied and passionate studies, which he pursued throughout his life, he considered entering the Benedictine Order; but in the end he became a secular priest and was granted the honorary title of abbot, which remained with him always, bestowed upon him by Basilio Puoti (as it was upon Rosmini and Gioberti). He was a pupil and follower of Puoti in the literary school that descended from him: he was a purist in language, a writer and artist of elaborate and most noble style, which shines forth in all his works, especially in his principal one, The Life of Christ. In 1860, the year in which the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was united to Italy, F. was appointed director of the National Library of Naples, a position he held until his death. He had devoted disciples and illustrious friends, foremost among them Francesco Acri (q.v.), the great translator of Plato.
The cultural milieu in which F.’s thought arose was Italy in the first half of the 19th century, even though he developed his speculative and literary activity chiefly in the second half of that century. That is to say, it was the philosophy of the Christian romantic spirit, whose major representatives were Rosmini and Gioberti; it appealed to the Platonic-Augustinian tradition, as that which seemed best to reconcile traditional Christian thought with the demands of modern thought. His characteristic and fundamental theses were those of the Platonic-Augustinian tradition in general, more or less modernized: particularly the unity of philosophy and theology, ontologism, and voluntarism. The principal sources of this thought in F. were first Plato and Augustine, then Bonaventure and Duns Scotus, and finally Rosmini and above all Gioberti, whom he interpreted in an orthodox manner.
F.’s works are not numerous, at least not his principal ones. In chronological order: *L’Armonia universale* (Naples 1858), *L’Arte del dire* (ibid. 1857), *La Vita di Cristo* (5 vols., Florence 1869–93; new ed. Turin 1930). As Christ was the centre of his thought, so *The Life of Christ* is the centre of his writings. Indeed, of his principal works, the first two, and especially the first, were themselves preparatory to this and were infused into II. *L’Armonia universale*, which is his philosophical system, represents the metaphysical substratum (ontologico-voluntaristic) of *The Life of Christ*, and indeed it is found especially in the first chapters of that work. *L’Arte del dire*, which represents his aesthetics, furnished him with the literary principles that he then applied in composing *The Life of Christ* itself. And the metaphysical conception that informs it, namely beauty as the manifestation of God and therefore one with His Word, is an element that would be maintained, framed, and developed in the same work.
*The Life of Christ* occupied his labours for about thirty years. Manzoni judged the first book of it thus: “Defensoribus istis tempus eget.” The title should not mislead, for F.’s aim was not to write an empirical, historical life of Christ, but rather a philosophical, dialectical life, extending as wide as creation itself. For, according to F., Jesus Christ is not merely a fact, however fundamental and prodigious, of universal history, but the condition and explanation of it, indeed of all reality. The development of this concept is effectively sketched in the proemium of the work. It comprises three books. The first describes the preparation and universal expectation of Christ, from the very beginning of creation. This might be called the first life of Christ, awaited and foretold by all created reality, both physical and spiritual, of which he is the intimate meaning and profound explication. The second book narrates the human life of Christ, that is, the Incarnation of the Word, which was the ultimate purpose of the creative design and would have taken place even without original sin. The third book traces in broad outline the new life of Christ in His Church, and through it in all humanity, until the end of time: that is, the life of the Mystical Body of Christ as it sojourns in the world until its glory.