GRASSI, ORAZIO. - Jesuit, b. at Savona ca. 1583, d. at Rome on 23 July 1654. He entered the Society at the age of eighteen; he taught mathematics at Genoa and then at Rome.

Here he composed the treatise De tribus cometis (Rome 1619) to clarify the nature of the three comets that appeared in 1618, to which Mario Guiducci replied with the Discorso sulle comete (Florence 1619), written in large part by Galileo (v.). G. replied, under the pseudonym of Lotario Sarsi, with the treatise Libra astronomica ac philosophica (Perugia 1619) and then a second time with his Ratio ponderum librae et libellae (Paris 1626). According to Guiducci, G. showed himself not entirely averse to the motion of the earth. In 1626 he was the architect of the church of St. Ignatius in Rome and prepared the model of it for Card. Ludovisi in 1628-29; on his design the church was later completed in 1685.

Bibliography6 works

BIBL.: Sommervogel, III, coll. 1685-86; IX, col. 433; G. Bricarelli, G. Galilei e la teoria del canocchiale, in Civ. Catt., 1912, II, pp. 456-61; id., La figura morale di G. Galilei, ibid., 1916, IV, pp. 416-29; id., Il p. O. G. architetto di S. Ignazio in Roma, ibid., 1922, II, pp. 13-25; G. Galilei, Opere, VI, Florence 1932, pp. 21-22, 109-22 (here are found the first two works of G.).

Pio Paschini

@incollection{ec6_grassi_orazio, author = {Paschini, Pio}, title = {Grassi, orazio}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {VI}, pages = {1005--1006}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1951}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/grassi-orazio} }

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Grassi, Orazio

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