Fornari, Vito

FORNARI, VITO. - Philosopher and man of letters, b. at Molfetta on 10 March 1821, d. at Naples on 6 March 1900. A solitary and meditative spirit, his life presents no events of great importance. After various and passionate studies, which he continued throughout his life, he thought of entering the Benedictine Order; but he ended by becoming a secular priest, and he was given the honorary title of abbot, a title that thereafter always remained with him, conferred by Basilio Puoti (as with Rosmini and Gioberti). He was a disciple of Puoti and his continuator in the literary school that descends from him: he was a purist in language, a writer and artist of elaborate and most noble style, which stands out in all his works, particularly in the Vita di Cristo, his principal one. In 1860, the year in which the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was united with Italy, F. was called to the direction of the National Library of Naples, and he held that office until his death. He had devoted disciples and illustrious friends, first among them Francesco Acri (v.), the great translator of Plato.

The cultural milieu in which F.'s thought arises is Italy in the first half of the 19th century, even though he carried on his speculative and literary activity mainly in the second half of that century. That is, it is the philosophy of romantic spiritualism, which has its major representatives in Rosmini and Gioberti: and it harks back to the Platonic-Augustinian tradition, as the one that seemed best to reconcile traditional and Christian thought with the demands of modern thought. Its characteristic and fundamental theses are the same as those of the Platonic-Augustinian tradition in general, more or less moderated: particularly the unity of philosophy and theology, ontologism and voluntarism. And the principal sources of this thought in F. are first of all Plato and Augustine, then Bonaventure and Duns Scotus, and finally Rosmini and above all Gioberti, interpreted orthodoxly.

F.'s works are not many, at least the principal ones. In chronological order: the Armonia universale (Naples 1850), the Arte del dire (ibid. 1857), the Vita di Cristo (5 vols., Florence 1869-93; new ed. Turin 1930). As Christ was the center of his thoughts, so the Vita di Cristo is the center of his writings. In fact, of his principal works, the first two, and especially the first, were themselves a preparation for this one and were transfused into it. The Armonia universale, which is his philosophical system, represents the metaphysical substratum (ontological-voluntaristic) of the Vita di Cristo, and indeed it is found especially in the first chapters of the latter. The Arte del dire, which represents his aesthetics, furnished him with the literary principles that he then applied in composing the Vita di Cristo itself. And the metaphysical conception that informs it, namely beauty as a manifestation of God and therefore one with His Word, is an element that will be maintained, framed and developed in that same work.

The Vita di Cristo engaged his labors for about thirty years. Manzoni judged of its first book: « Defensoribus istis tempus eget ». The title must not be misleading, since F.'s purpose was not to compose a historical, empirical life of Christ, but rather a philosophical, dialectical life, extending as far as the created world is broad. For, according to F., Jesus Christ is not merely a fact, however fundamental and prodigious, of universal history, but the condition and the explanation of it, indeed of all reality. The development of this concept is effectively set forth in the proem of the work. It comprises three books. In the first, the preparation and universal expectation of Christ is described, from the beginning of creation. This is what might be called the first life of Christ, awaited and foretold by all created reality, physical and spiritual, since He is its intimate meaning and profound explanation. 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. In the third book, the new life of Christ in His Church is traced in broad outline, and through it in all humanity, until the end of time: that is, the life of the Mystical Body of Christ pilgrimaging through the world unto glory.

Umberto A. Padovani