Antonio Rosmini-Serbati
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Antonio Francesco Davide Ambrogio Rosmini-Serbati (;
Rovereto Rovereto (; "wood of sessile oaks"; locally: ''Roveredo'') is a city and ''comune'' in Trentino in northern Italy, located in the Vallagarina valley of the Adige River. History Rovereto was an ancient fortress town standing at the frontier ...
, 25 March 1797
Stresa Stresa is a town and ''comune'' of about 4,600 residents on the shores of Lake Maggiore in the province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola in the Piedmont region of northern Italy, about northwest of Milan. It is situated on road and rail routes to the Simpl ...
, 1 July 1855) was an Italian
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and
philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
. He founded the
Rosminians The Rosminians, officially named the Institute of Charity ( la, Institutum Caritatis), abbreviated I.C., are a Roman Catholic clerical religious congregation of Pontifical Right for men founded by Antonio Rosmini and first organised in 1828. The ...
, officially the Institute of Charity or , pioneered the concept of social justice, and Italian
Liberal Catholicism Liberal Catholicism was a current of thought within the Catholic Church. It was influential in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, especially in France. It is largely identified with French political theorists such as Felicité ...
.
Alessandro Manzoni Alessandro Francesco Tommaso Antonio Manzoni (, , ; 7 March 1785 – 22 May 1873) was an Italian poet, novelist and philosopher. He is famous for the novel '' The Betrothed'' (orig. it, I promessi sposi) (1827), generally ranked among the maste ...
considered Rosmini the only contemporary Italian author worth reading.


Biography

Antonio Rosmini Serbati was born 24 March 1797, at Rovereto, in the Austrian Tyrol. He studied at the University of Padua, and was ordained priest at Chioggia, 21 April 1821. In 1822 he received a Doctorate in Theology and Canon Law.Cormack, George, and Daniel Hickey. "Rosmini and Rosminianism." The Catholic Encyclopedia
Vol. 13. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912. 15 November 2016.
During this time Rosmini formulated his "Principle of Passivity". Rosmini felt compelled to ask himself: Do my plans spring more from my own subjective desire to do good than from a desire to do the will of God?”. Reflecting in this way, Rosmini articulated the principle in two parts: be ready to undertake any work of charity but only so long as it is God's Providence that presents it; in the meantime, immerse oneself in the commitment to continual conversion, seeking the amendment of one's own life."Antonio Rosmini", Rosminians, Ireland
/ref>


The Institute of Charity

In 1828 he founded at Monte Calvario near Domodossola, a new religious community, the Institute of Charity, known generally since as the
Rosminians The Rosminians, officially named the Institute of Charity ( la, Institutum Caritatis), abbreviated I.C., are a Roman Catholic clerical religious congregation of Pontifical Right for men founded by Antonio Rosmini and first organised in 1828. The ...
. In the autumn of 1830 he inaugurated the observance of the rule at Calvario, and from 1834 to 1835 had charge of a parish at Rovereto. Later foundations followed at Stresa and Domodossola. The Constitutions of the institute were approved by presented to
Pope Gregory XVI Pope Gregory XVI ( la, Gregorius XVI; it, Gregorio XVI; born Bartolomeo Alberto Cappellari; 18 September 1765 – 1 June 1846) was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 2 February 1831 to his death in 1 June 1846. He h ...
on 20 December 1838. The institute spread rapidly in England and Italy, and requests for foundations came from various countries. The members might be priests or laymen, who devoted themselves to preaching, the education of youth, and works of universal charity—material, spiritual and intellectual. They work in
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,
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,
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. In London they were attached to the historical Church of St Etheldreda, Ely Place, Holborn. In 1962, Rosmini College School for Boys was founded in Auckland, New Zealand by Father Catcheside. Rosmini was retained as a political advisor to the then government of Piedmont. In August 1848, he was sent to Rome by King Charles Albert of Piedmont to enlist the pope on the side of Italy as against Austria. Rosmini was invited to serve in the Roman Curia of
Pope Pius IX Pope Pius IX ( it, Pio IX, ''Pio Nono''; born Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti; 13 May 1792 – 7 February 1878) was head of the Catholic Church from 1846 to 1878, the longest verified papal reign. He was notable for convoking the First Vatican ...
as prime minister of the
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. He participated in the intellectual struggle which had for its object emancipation from
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, but as a trusted ecclesiastical advisor and diplomat he was not an initiator of the movement which ended in the freedom and unity of Italy. In fact, while eager for the deliverance of Italy from Austria, his aim was to bring about a confederation of the states of the country, which was to be under the control of the pope. Upon establishment of the
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, the Pontiff was forced to flee and became estranged from his former advisor in political matters. The tenuous political circumstances made it very difficult to reconcile the two men's differing projects: innovative social and juridical reforms, however modest, fell victim to the more pressing existential needs of defending the supremacy of the Church's temporal powers.


Writings

Rosmini's works, '' Of the five wounds of the Holy Church'' and ''The Constitution of Social Justice'' (see
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below), aroused great opposition, especially among the
Jesuits The Society of Jesus ( la, Societas Iesu; abbreviation: SJ), also known as the Jesuits (; la, Iesuitæ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
, and in 1849 they were placed upon the
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.Muratore, Umberto. "Antonio Rosmini", Centro Internazionale di studi Rosminiani
/ref> Rosmini at once declared his submission and retired to
Stresa Stresa is a town and ''comune'' of about 4,600 residents on the shores of Lake Maggiore in the province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola in the Piedmont region of northern Italy, about northwest of Milan. It is situated on road and rail routes to the Simpl ...
on
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, where he died. Before his death he had the satisfaction of learning that the works in question were dismissed, that is, proclaimed free from censure by the Congregation of the Index. Twenty years later, the word dismissed (''dimittantur'') became the subject of controversy, some maintaining that it amounted to a direct approval, others that it was purely negative and did not imply that the books were free from error. Vincenzo Maria Gatti, the Dominican professor of theology at the College of Saint Thomas, the forerunner of the
Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas A pontifical ( la, pontificale) is a Christian liturgical book containing the Christian liturgy, liturgies that only a bishop may perform. Among the liturgies are those of the ordinal (liturgy), ordinal for the ordination and consecration of dea ...
and
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, was instrumental in partially rehabilitating the works of Rosmini. In an article published in ''
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'' on 16 June 1876, Gatti made clear that Pius IX did not intend the "dimittantur" as amounting to wholesale condemnation. The controversy continued until 1887, when
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condemned forty of Rosmini's propositions. Referring to this condemnation, however, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a document in 2001 in which it declared that "the meaning of the propositions, as understood and condemned by the Decree, does not belong to the authentic position of Rosmini." In 1998 Rosmini was named by
Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II ( la, Ioannes Paulus II; it, Giovanni Paolo II; pl, Jan Paweł II; born Karol Józef Wojtyła ; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his ...
in the encyclical '' Fides et Ratio'' as one of the greater Christian thinkers.


Thought

The most comprehensive view of Rosmini's philosophical standpoint is to be found in his ', in which he set forth the conception of a complete encyclopaedia of the human knowable, synthetically conjoined, according to the order of ideas, in a perfectly harmonious whole. Contemplating the position of recent philosophy from
John Locke John Locke (; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism ...
to
Georg Hegel Georg may refer to: * ''Georg'' (film), 1997 *Georg (musical), Estonian musical * Georg (given name) * Georg (surname) George is a surname of Irish, English, Welsh, South Indian Christian, Middle Eastern Christian (usually Lebanese), French, or ...
, and having his eye directed to the ancient and fundamental problem of the origin, truth and certainty of our ideas, he wrote: "If philosophy is to be restored to love and respect, I think it will be necessary, in part, to return to the teachings of the ancients, and in part to give those teachings the benefit of modern methods" (''Theodicy'', a. 148). He examined and analysed the fact of human knowledge, and obtained the following results: #that the notion or idea of being or existence in general enters into, and is presupposed by, all our acquired cognitions, so that, without it, they would be impossible #that this idea is essentially objective, inasmuch as what is seen in it is as distinct from and opposed to the mind that sees it as the light is from the eye that looks at it #that it is essentially true, because being and truth are convertible terms, and because in the vision of it the mind cannot err, since error could only be committed by a judgment, and here there is no judgment, but a pure intuition affirming nothing and denying nothing #that by the application of this essentially objective and true idea the human being intellectually perceives, first, the animal body individually conjoined with him, and then, on occasion of the sensations produced in him not by himself, the causes of those sensations, that is, from the action felt he perceives and affirms an agent, a being, and therefore a true thing, that acts on him, and he thus gets at the external world, these are the true primitive judgments, containing ##the subsistence of the particular being (subject), and ##its essence or species as determined by the quality of the action felt from it (
predicate Predicate or predication may refer to: * Predicate (grammar), in linguistics * Predication (philosophy) * several closely related uses in mathematics and formal logic: **Predicate (mathematical logic) **Propositional function **Finitary relation, o ...
) #that reflection, by separating the essence or species from the subsistence, obtains the full specific idea (universalization), and then from this, by leaving aside some of its elements, the abstract specific idea (abstraction) #that the mind, having reached this stage of development, can proceed to further and further abstracts, including the first principles of reasoning, the principles of the several sciences, complex ideas, groups of ideas, and so on without end #finally, that the same most universal idea of being, this generator and formal element of all acquired cognitions, cannot itself be acquired, but must be innate in us, implanted by God in our nature. Being, as naturally shining to our mind, must therefore be what men call the light of reason. Hence the name Rosmini gives it of ideal being; and this he laid down as the fundamental principle of all philosophy and the supreme criterion of truth and certainty. This he believed to be the teaching of St Augustine, as well as of St Thomas, of whom he was an ardent admirer and defender.


The cause for canonization

On 26 June 2006,
Pope Benedict XVI Pope Benedict XVI ( la, Benedictus XVI; it, Benedetto XVI; german: link=no, Benedikt XVI.; born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, , on 16 April 1927) is a retired prelate of the Catholic church who served as the head of the Church and the sovereign ...
signed a Decree of the
heroic virtue Heroic virtue is a phrase coined by Augustine of Hippo to describe the virtue of early Christian martyrs and used by the Catholic Church. The Greek pagan term hero described a person with possibly superhuman abilities and great goodness, and "it ...
s, and hence declared Rosmini to be
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. On 3 June 2007, Pope Benedict XVI authorized the promulgation of a decree approving Rosmini's beatification. On 18 November 2007 he was beatified in
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, Italy.


Works

Of his numerous works, of which a collected edition in 17 volumes was issued at Milan (1842–44), supplemented by ''Opere postume'' in 5 volumes (Turin, 1859–74), the most important are: * *''The Principles of Moral Science'' (1831) *''The Restoration of Philosophy in Italy'' (1836) *''The Philosophy of Right'' (1841–45) The following have also been translated into English: * * * * *'Psychology'' (Anonymous) (1884–88) * * *


References


Further reading

* * Includes a biographical sketch and bibliography. * : * *


External links

*Antonio Rosmini, Lezioni di Maria Scalisi sull'Antropologia in servizio della scienza morale, in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJyGUDrn2DA * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Rosmini-Serbati, Antonio 1797 births 1855 deaths Founders of Catholic religious communities Italian philosophers Italian beatified people People from Trentino 19th-century Italian Roman Catholic theologians Beatifications by Pope Benedict XVI Venerated Catholics by Pope Benedict XVI Liberal Catholicism 19th-century Italian philosophers