SOLARI, BENEDETTO. — Dominican bishop, b. at Chiavari on 9 March 1742, d. at Genoa on 13 April 1814. He entered the Dominican Order while still young, became professor of dogmatic theology at the University of Genoa, and was later appointed bishop of Noli on 1 June 1778.
The exact date when he came into contact with Degola (q.v.) is uncertain, but he became a close friend of his, even contemplating incardination of Degola into his own diocese, and was deeply influenced by him without, however, ever sharing his bitter and partisan spirit. Already viewed unfavorably for a publication on the Pauline privilege (1789), he caused a stir by opposing—uniquely among Italian bishops—the publication of the apostolic constitution *Autorem Fidei*, which condemned the Synod of Pistoia, and by sending a letter to the Senate of Genoa on 8 October 1794 setting out the reasons for his opposition. This led to a controversy with Cardinal Gerdil, and in 1804 he published an *Apologia* in three volumes, reiterating the customary arguments of the native Jansenist controversy.
Opposed to the civil constitution of the clergy, he was later drawn by Degola into revolutionary ideas and worked on the commission tasked with drafting the constitution of the democratic Ligurian Republic. Soon, however, disillusioned by the excesses of the innovators, he refused to consecrate Calleri—whom Degola’s faction sought to impose as coadjutor to the aging archbishop of Genoa—without papal approval. Later, he declined to attend the national council convoked by Napoleon in Paris in 1811. In his small diocese, he was an excellent pastor, full of zeal and charity, and never attempted to impose Jansenist ideas on his clergy, though traces of them appeared in some of his pastoral letters.