PANZUTI, BIAGIO. - Redemptorist theologian, born in Aieta (Cosenza) on 21 Oct. 1773, died in Naples on 8 May 1846. He entered the religious life in 1792 and successfully taught theology to the students of his congregation, of which he later became consultor and procurator general.
P. was a sought-after preacher of spiritual exercises and published several oratorical works on the Madonna, St. Alphonsus, and the clergy. He devoted himself more intensively to the study of Alfonsian moral theology, becoming an effective disseminator of II. In addition to his *Sacrae theologicae speculativae institutiones* (6 vols., Naples 1828–31), his classic work, which many treatises drew upon, is *Theologia moralis B. Alphonsi M. de Ligorio in institutiones redacta ad usum studiosae iuventutis ipsius praesertium Congregationis* (4 vols., ibid. 1824). This first systematic presentation of Alfonsian doctrine made P. well known in Europe, not least because of the controversies that arose among Italian theologians. In 1825, the Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs, in a circular, urged the bishops of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies to adopt these *Institutiones* in their seminaries, while some rigorists denounced them to the king as “dangerous and erroneous.” The controversies did not cease even after the favorable opinion issued on 15 Feb. 1826 by four Roman revisers (Ventura, Zecchinelli, Orioli, and Santini). A month later, at the request of the nuncio and the Cardinal Archbishop of Naples, they were examined by the Sacred Congregation of the Index, which declared them in conformity with the teachings of St. Alphonsus.
In 1842 he published two notable volumes of casuistry in accordance with the thought of St. Alphonsus.