MOLINELLI, GIOVAN BATTISTA. - Jansenist Piarist, born in Genoa on 29 January 1730, died there on 25 February 1799. Like his fellow Piarist Martino Natali (v.), whom he replaced as professor of theology at the Collegio Nazareno, he owes his Jansenist formation to the Roman environment.
A disciple of Paolo Battista Curlo, who there is reason to believe was an Augustinian, he took part in the polemics against devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in this consistent with Natali, who had anonymously published a Lettera istruttiva d'un teologo romano ad una religiosa sua congiunta intorno alla divozione al Cuore di Gesù (Rome 1773), in which, while the symbolism was admitted, its cult was denied. His work is generally of Augustinian and Port-Royalist inspiration (for the most part manuscript and preserved in the provincial archive of Cornigliano, in several volumes), even if prudently diplomatic and guarded. It earned him at one and the same time reservations on the part of the Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques and sympathy on the part of Italian and foreign Jansenists. While substantially adhering to the democratic, disciplinary and liturgical novelties, in order not to disturb the unity of the Church, he may be considered in politics a conservative and in religion a reserved and hermetic dissembler. An anti-Molinist, he took part in the doctrinal struggle against the Jesuits together with the former Jesuit Gian Carlo Brignole, brother of the last doge of Genoa.
He wrote several works: Selectae praepositiones de peccatis, de peccatorum meritis et remissione iuxta doctrinam ss. Augustini et Thomae Aquinatis (Genoa 1770); De fide et symbolo (ibid. 1771); Del primato dell'Apostolo s. Pietro e dei Romani Pontefici suoi successori in confutazione di vari scritti recenti (ibid. 1784). Because of the ambiguity of its treatment it pleased and displeased the Jansenists, so that the De unitate Ecclesiae (ibid. 1785) passed almost unnoticed, redeemed however by the Riflessioni sopra l'operetta stampata in Pavia nel 1784 che ha per titolo: Vera Idea della Santa Sede (ibid. 1787), which astonished his friends, but which must be considered within the prudential and opportunistic sphere of the polemical literature of early Jansenism. A figure of no modest standing as a theologian, M. would deserve a careful examination not only because he prepared the climate and the ground for Eustachio Degola, his devoted disciple, and for all the Ligurian Jansenists, since he had been for many years a teacher of theology in the Genoese schools, but also for having treated themes and theses that were properly dogmatic, which later had a decisive development through the work of Tamburini in the « Portico Teologico » of Pavia.
Bibliography3 works
Benvenuto Matteucci