FUCINI, Renato. Novelist, born 1 April 1843 at Monterotondo (Pisa), died 25 February 1921 at Empoli.
He first made his name with I cento sementi in vernacolo piano (1872), published under the pseudonym Neri Tanfucio, but later achieved mature artistic expression in his vivid descriptions of settings, characters and landscapes—alive as those of the Macchiaioli painters—and in the numerous sketches and fine tales that followed (Le vigne di Neri, 4th ed., Milan 1890; All'aria aperta, Florence 1887; Nella campagna toscana, 1870), as well as in his letters to a friend (Napoli a occhio nudo, 1887) and his autobiographical writings (Acqua passata, Foglie al vento, unico, 1879), which illuminate his life from agricultural surveyor to school inspector. For Fucini, religion was a remnant of superstition; hence the anticlerical motifs frequent in his prose.
F. U. G. — Fear (II. also orrore) is, in St Thomas (Summa Theol., I-II, q. 23, a. 1), the passion by which our concupiscible appetite recoils from an impending evil. When this aversion so seizes a person as to make him shrink from every effort in the exercise of religion and the fulfilment of his state’s duties, fear becomes a disordered passion that readily leads to the capital sin of sloth (v.).
In a more general sense, as here understood, fear is the act of fleeing (Latin fugere), namely the act of one who quickly withdraws from some person or thing out of fear or to save himself.
Morally and juridically, fear may in certain cases be an obligation, in others an act of life or an evasion of duty. Everything depends on the end for which recourse is had to flight, the object from which one flees, and the obligations of law.
The legitimacy of flight in the face of persecution was a question that stirred the earliest Christians. Against the rigorist thesis of Tertullian (v.), already a Montanist, who held that flight in such circumstances is inadmissible and amounts to a denial of God’s will (De fuga in persecutione, written c. AD 212; PL 2, 103-20), and against the practice of some believers who deemed it a duty to present themselves and volunteer as Christians, the more moderate view prevailed: flight, though always perilous, was permitted as a means of eluding pursuit. This view rested on Christ’s own words, whether precept or counsel, which are unequivocal (Mt 10:17-23). Nor should we forget Jesus’ own example of flight (Mt 14:13; Jn 8:58-59; 11:53-54) or that of the apostle Paul, who was lowered in a basket to escape his persecutors at Damascus (Acts 8:4; 9:23-26). Even Tertullian’s greatest admirer, St Cyprian, hid near Carthage during the Decian persecution (AD 250); likewise the great martyr of Smyrna, St Polycarp, had earlier behaved in the same way (Martyr. Pol., chaps. 5-7). It was the flight of Christians from cities where persecution raged that gave rise to the first cenobitic communities and monasteries in Egypt and elsewhere. St Athanasius brilliantly developed this theme in his Apologia de fuga sua, a polemic against his detractors who had been his persecutors, from whom he had escaped in a series of hair-raising flights (PG 25, 603-80).
Today this question is no longer disputed, for it is universally admitted that flight from persecution is lawful; it would become sinful only if circumstances made such withdrawal tantamount to an implicit denial of the faith, or if there were an explicit divine command to the contrary, or if pastoral duties obliged one to remain with the flock in the midst of persecution when this was naturally possible. Anyone who fled under such circumstances could not avoid being regarded as an apostate; the shepherd of souls would place himself on a level with the hireling (mercenarius fugiens: Jn 10:13).
While these problems remain ever present in a Church continually persecuted, even more practical are other questions concerning the obligation to flee from occasions of corruption and sin. The preservation of virtue demands that all external occasions that might endanger it be shunned.
It would indeed be rash to expose oneself to temptation, still more to provoke it, without just cause proportionate to the risk. A grave danger must be fled under pain of mortal sin; a light danger under pain of venial sin (for a fuller treatment, including the confessor’s attitude toward those who seek occasions, V. OCCASION OF SIN).
Christian asceticism has especially insisted on flight from occasions contrary to chastity (v.), which are among the most perilous.
Thus far we have used “flight” not only in its literal, almost physical sense, but also figuratively: flight from occasions may mean avoiding solitude at times, changing one’s environment or occupation, diverting one’s gaze and attention from mental images and objects that experience shows likely to arouse temptation.
Returning to the literal sense of the word, a series of contrary problems arises concerning the legitimacy of flight when it amounts to a dereliction of duty. Certain persons bound to an office or commitment, or to a state of life, cannot abandon their post even when danger threatens, still less when confronting it demands heroic action. A parish priest, for example, cannot leave his parish during an epidemic that threatens his own life; nor can the district medical officer, except under specific conditions and to a specific extent; to do so would constitute not only a sin but often, in various legal systems, a crime as well (v. ABANDONMENT; ACT OF HEROIC CHARITY). Likewise a soldier may not desert (for various hypotheses, V. MILITARY SERVICE).