FRANCHI, Ausonio (Cristoforo Bonavino). - Philosopher, b. at Pegli (Genoa) on 27 February 1821, d. at Genoa on 12 September 1895. In 1840 he entered the Congregation of the Oblates of St. Alphonsus M. de' Liguori founded by the blessed Gianelli. But in 1844, a few months after his priestly ordination, he was expelled from it by the founder because of the intransigence with which he fought Alfonsian probabilism.
A liberal in politics and an ardent Giobertian, he not only supplied documents for the compilation of Il gesuita moderno, but took a personal part in the struggle against the Society of Jesus with two pamphlets printed clandestinely in 1846 (I Gesuiti and Autentiche prove contro i Gesuiti). Suspended a divinis because of the errors defended in his Corso di religione alle Figlie di S. Bernardo (Genoa 1849), he laid aside the ecclesiastical habit and devoted himself to philosophical studies, to which Gioberti had urged him. The first fruit was La filosofia delle scuole italiane (Capolago 1852; in 1853 an Appendice alla filosofia delle scuole italiane came out at Genoa). Through a prolix Introduzione and 12 polemical letters to Prof. Bertini, A. F.'s fundamental work sets out to be the doctrinal justification of his apostasy, seeking at the same time, with skilful sophisms interspersed with vulgar blasphemies, to demonstrate the incompatibility between Catholicism and philosophy, which for him is synonymous with Kantianism.
In the work La religione del sec. XX (Lausanne 1853).
A. F. intends to underline the irreconcilability of religion with freedom: God is evil, the only possible philosophy is atheistic rationalism. There follow in chronological order Studi religiosi e filosofici: Dal sentimento (Turin 1854) and Il razionalismo del popolo (Geneva 1856), in which the style becomes calmer, but the poison more subtle and penetrating. Meanwhile he had moved from Genoa to Turin: a Giobertian first, he later adhered to Mazzini, but in the end he entered into polemics with him too in La ragione, a bimonthly review which he had founded in 1854. He supported Orsini and published his memoirs (F. Orsini, Memorie politiche, con un'appendice per A. F., Lugano 1860). Having settled in Milan in 1859, he directed La gente latina for some time. In 1860 T. Mamiani established for him a chair of history of philosophy at the University of Pavia, from which he was transferred in 1863 to the Scientific Academy of Milan. The works of this period: Letture sulla storia della filosofia moderna (2 vols., Milan 1863); Saggi di critica e polemica (3 parts, ibid. 1871-72); Lettere a N. Mameli sulla teoria del giudizio (2 vols., ibid. 1871), add nothing to the Kantian rationalism of which he professes himself a follower; indeed his adherence to the master's doctrine becomes with time less intransigent, and in the Lettere the disagreement is already taking shape.
Meanwhile materialism and positivism gained the upper hand and A. F. fell silent; indeed in these years he began the revision of his thirty years of philosophical activity. Thus in 1879 was born the plan of Ultima critica (3 vols., Milan 1889-93), which is meant to be the «confutation of all the paralogisms that had led me to rationalism, and exposition of the arguments that have led me back first to Thomistic philosophy and then to the Christian faith» (Lettere intime, Belluno 1900, pp. 14-16). In the first part he combats especially the Kantianism championed in the Filosofia delle scuole italiane; in the second, the agnosticism, symbolism and religious evolutionism defended in the Studi filosofici e religiosi; in the third, the unbelief widely propagated in Il razionalismo del popolo. Excellent as a retractation, Ultima critica has a limited constructive value, because more than a systematic exposition of the truth it is a destruction of his previous doctrinal creed.
A. F. was also a pedagogue, and if a single posthumous work, Lezioni di pedagogia (Siena 1898), keeps him remembered in the history of education, his contribution was notable especially for the sound modernity with which he looks at and solves the didactic and moral problems relating to the developmental period. The intellectual and philosophical conversion of A. F., which was already an accomplished fact by about 1879, long preceded the religious one, which took place only in 1889. In 1892 he retired to Genoa in the Convent of S. Anna of the Discalced Carmelites and remained there until his death.