GIOVANNI ANDREA SERRANO. — Bishop of Potenza, a Calabrian born in Castelmonado (now Filadelfia, province of Catanzaro) in 1731, died in Potenza on 24 February 1799, known as the leading representative of southern Jansenism. Until 1759 he lived in Rome, where his teachers were Foggini and Bottari (q.v.).
The fruit of this education was the *De vita et scriptis Jani Vincentii Gravinae commentarius* (1758), in which S. found a way to satirize casuists and take a stand in favor of Augustinianism and against probabilism. During his Roman sojourn he met Scipione de' Ricci, Pietro Tamburini, and all the Jansenists who frequented the Archetto, with whom he maintained relations, especially with the Bishop of Pistoia. In 1759 he returned to Naples and became professor and then secretary of the Neapolitan Academy. During this period he wrote: *De Sacris Scripturis liber, qui est locorum moralium primus* (Naples 1763), in which he argues for the necessity of spreading the Bible and the obligation of its reading in the vernacular for the use of all the faithful; *De claris catechisticis ad Ferdinandum IV regem libri III* (ibid., 1769), his most celebrated work in which he praises the catechisms of Fleury and Colbert, expatiating on the history of that of Mesenguy and revealing contempt for scholastic theology and sympathy for the reformist ideas of the Jansenists; and the *Apologeticus* (Naples 1771). To *De claris catechisticis*, P. Mamachi opposed a work *Del diritto libero della Chiesa di acquistare e possedere beni temporali*, in which he noted twelve divergent points, acting in his capacity as Master of the Sacred Palace. S. replied with an equal number of *Riflessioni* adduced to justify his orthodoxy. This controversy flared up on the occasion of S.’s designation to the bishopric of Potenza (1782) by the Neapolitan court. Mamachi added twenty-four further articles renewing and confirming, while broadening, the previous denunciations. Pius VI himself intervened, first requiring special interrogations of the candidate for the appointment, then appointing a congregation of cardinals to decide the dispute, which, because of the reluctance of the ministers of the King of Naples, threatened to take on a public form in favor of regalism. S. submitted to the judgment of the Holy See, following the equivocal norm of Jansenist submission, and was thus able to obtain the appointment and canonical investiture. Besides his pastoral letters to the diocese, five years after his entry he wrote a volume in defense of regalist principles: *La prammatica sanzione di s. Luigi re di Francia proposta ai riformatori dell'ecclesiastica disciplina* (Naples 1788), and another to his fellow bishops to induce them to render themselves independent of Rome even in consecration: *Ragionamenti dell'auto-rità degli arcivescovi del Regno di Napoli di consacrare i vescovi* (Naples 1788). In keeping with his education and moral principles he despised the work of St. Alphonsus, although more than a Jansenist S. must be considered a liberal reformer and a regalist: reviving the Quenselian ideas of Jansenism and the controversy of the Appellants, and defending Gallican theories, he did not disdain to move from regalism to Jacobinism. He died in 1799, assassinated in his bed by assassins and mutilated in the streets of the city by a revolutionary mob, a victim of the reaction against the monarchy whose legal pretensions he had supported.