Andrea Spagni (8 August 1716 – 16 September 1788) was an Italian
Jesuit
The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
theologian, educator, and author who was born at
Florence
Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025.
Florence ...
. He entered the Society of Jesus on 22 October 1731, and was employed chiefly in teaching philosophy and theology, though for a time he lectured in mathematics at the Roman College, and assisted
Father Asclepi in his astronomical observations. He died in Rome.
Works
The most noted of his writings is the work ''De Miraculis'' (Rome, 1777), which he revised in two succeeding editions (Rome, 1779 and 1785). In this work, besides giving the positive doctrine on the nature and reality of
miracle
A miracle is an event that is inexplicable by natural or scientific lawsOne dictionary define"Miracle"as: "A surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divi ...
s, he marshalled together the objections brought forward by the rationalists of his own and preceding times against the chief
Biblical
The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) biblical languages ...
miracles. The work may be considered as a compendium of the literature on the subject, up to the last quarter of the eighteenth century.
His other chief works are:
*"De Causa efficiente" (Rome, 1764);
*"De Bono, Malo et Pulchro" (Rome, 1766);
*"De Mundo" (Rome, 1770);
*"De Ideis Mentis humanæ" (Rome, 1772);
*"De Motu" (Rome, 1774);
*"De Anima Brutorum" (Rome, 1775);
*"De Signis Idearum" (Rome, 1781).
References
;Attribution
* The entry cites:
*
Sommervogel
Carlos Sommervogel (8 January 1834 – 4 March 1902) was a French Jesuit scholar. He was author of the monumental ''Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus'', which served as one of the major references for the editors of the Catholic Encyclo ...
, , VII (Brussels, 1896).
External links
Andrea Spagni (1770) ''De mundo dissertatio''- digital facsimile,
Linda Hall Library
The Linda Hall Library is a privately endowed American library of science, engineering and technology located in Kansas City, Missouri, on the grounds of a urban arboretum. It claims to be the "largest independently funded public library of sc ...
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1716 births
1788 deaths
18th-century Italian Jesuits
18th-century Italian Roman Catholic theologians
Italian educators
Jesuit theologians
Clergy from Florence