POGGI, GIUSEPPE. - Born in Piozzano (Piacenza) on 21 Aug. 1761, died at Ruebelle, near Montmorency, on 19 Feb. 1842.
Noted as director of the Annali politico-ecclesiastici of Genoa, whose actual editing was done by Degola, he received his education in Rome, where in 1785 he was ordained subdeacon. From the Roman Jansenist milieu he derived, more than a Jansenist consciousness, a singular antipathy toward the Holy See. A guest and friend of Bishop Scipione de’ Ricci, he collaborated with him. In 1789 he published in Florence in three volumes the Emende sincere di un che-rico lombardo alle annotazioni pacifiche, which could serve as a response to similar libels that had appeared up to that time, and the Lettere Traspadane of Fra Colombano to the most distinguished author of the Elogio sincerissimo, which appeared in the first volume of the Jansenist Biblioteca ecclesiastica of Pavia in 1790. But Poggi, more than to the solitaires of Port-Royal, aligned himself with Rousseau and the Encyclopédie, as shown by Il Repubblicano Evangelico and L’Estensore Cisalpino, and if he professed any faith, it seems closer to that of the Savoyard Vicar than to the theory of Jansenius. If ever he adhered in his youth to the Jansenist movement, he certainly later passed to unitarian Jacobinism, a transition common in the period of the French Revolution. Thus is explained his contempt for theological debates, his hatred of the Curia, and his sympathy for a Christianizing deism; his defense of Ricci was more an occasion to demonstrate his Enlightenment resentment against the Holy See than a theological adherence.